Venezuela and Europe

¿Eres venezolano y vives en el exterior?

2012-01-31T13:54:00.000-08:00

Entonces consulta aquí el sitio donde puedes votar en las elecciones primarias para elegir el candidato para una Venezuela democrática.

Mexikanischer Botschafter wurde in Venezuela entführt

2012-01-30T10:39:00.000-08:00

Entführungen sind im "revolutionären, bolivarischen Venezuela" das alltägliches Brot. Da Venezuela kein Rechtsstaat ist, ist es ein Paradies für Entführer. Manchmal sind die Verbrecher aber so dumm, dass sie einen Botschafter entführen...nicht aus politischen Gründen, natürlich...pecunia non olet. Und das ist zu viel, selbst für die Chávez-Regierung.

Der Sieg der Gerechtigkeit: dieses Gemälde hat mit Venezuela nichts, aber auch nichts zu tun

Heute haben Entführer u.a. den Botschafter Mexikos und seine Frau entführt. Weil es sich aber um den Botschafter handelte, haben die Polizeiagenten der Chávezregierung agiert und den Diplomat samt Gattin befreit. Sie tun das am liebsten, wenn es sich um Diplomaten oder um berühmte Baseballspieler handelt, nicht um normale Bürger.

Ps. Und jetzt lesen wir, dass andere Entführer die Kinder und der Fahrer eines Unternehmers gerade jetzt entführt haben.

Venezuelas-Schönheitsköniginnen

2012-01-29T07:26:00.000-08:00

Spiegel zeigt's: Schönheitswahn in Venezuela. Darum haben wir, was wir haben: Chávez. Wenn so viele Venezolanerer und Venezolanerinnen so sehr auf Äusseres aufpassen, ohne zu erkennen, was wirklich wichtig ist und was langfristig bleiben wird, ist das Land leichte Beute für Schurken an der Macht.

Es ist schon peinlich, aber wahr, was da gezeigt wird. Schön wäre's, wenn unsere Leute stattdessen ein bisschen mehr und besser lesen bzw nachdenken würden.

Venezuelan surnames and the founder's effect

2012-01-27T10:44:00.000-08:00

I generated a little map showing the three most common surnames in every Venezuelan state. There are better methods to discover population movements based on surnames and yet even this distribution can tell us a little bit about our history.

The top surnames in Táchira and Mérida on the West - the region of the gochos - are a unique pattern in Venezuela: they both have Ramírez and Contreras among the top 3. Trujillo - the Northern most part of the Gocho area has Briceño as most popular surname and Montilla, the third one, is among the top 3 only there.

Falcón has Medina as third most common surname. Finally: Nueva Esparta and Sucre have among the top the surname Salazar. I am sure if we go back to the XIX century and perhaps earlier we will see some reasons for this distribution.

Chávez' youngest daughter

2012-01-25T06:09:00.000-08:00

You can see here a picture of Rosinés showing off her dollars. She is the youngest daughter of our caudillo, Hugo Chávez. In Venezuela there is a strict currency control that benefits the richest, those with connections. The currency is terribly overvalued and the best-connected earn a fortune thanks to the black market.

Rosainés' mother and former wife of our military strongman said the girl had made an error not by taking the picture but only by uploading it "in a medium where there are ignorant people who do not respect others".

That's the Revolución Bonita a few gullible in the North were so excited about. You can follow the new Rosinés fever in Twitter by looking for #Rosinesing

In the Oil-Boom Revolution, some get bacon and some get preferential dollars and organized meetings with Justin Bieber

Cántico

2012-01-25T03:43:00.000-08:00

Vicente Emilio Sojo was a Venezuelan composer. Here you have a little piece called Cántico.

Grumpy men

2012-01-25T01:47:00.000-08:00

I was reading an excellent post by Juan Cristóbal about Venezuela's useless elite. And I very much agree with what he said there: Venezuela's better-educated are not aware most of the subsidies are benefiting them the most - by far. And yet I thought again: but aren't we trying to go against the wind while oil prices keep going up 15-20% a year? Is it just the elite?

Don't we come up as technocrats who just think of numbers, of abstract concepts about sustainable development and so many other unpalatable or simply inedible things while others are enjoying the oil boom in Venezuela?

I read a study published yesterday in El Universal by Datos. I am not so sure about how reliable Datos as opinion pollster ix but the figures seem plausible to me. They say about 46% consider themselves pro-Chávez, 31% pro-oppo and 23% neutral. Among those "neutral" just a tiny majority tend towards the opposition, but just a bit. They also say that even if people feel the shortages of basic products like milk, sugar, maize flower and others and they are worried because of insecurity and unemployment, half the Venezuelans have a positive attitude towards the future.

How come? They say: "there are more Venezuelans with domestic appliances, more food, more income".

Rewind. Domestic appliances: as I wrote 8 months, this is going to have a big impact in Venezuela: the government is selling for a fraction of the price, sometimes just giving away, household appliances galore it has bought with the Chinese Fund, a fund that means Venezuela is selling China oil at an advantageous price for China for years and years to come. Miguel has written more on the Chinese fund here. As our gringo friend Steven says, the prices seem to be fairer than what many of us expected. And yet: the documents show how hungry for dolllars the Chávez government is. Chávez's supporters will say: of course, all to invest in social programmes. Bullocks. We got a loan for over 4 billion dollars last year to buy yet more Russian weapons and Venezuela is already the main importer of weapons in Latin America, number 8 on Earth.

José Rodríguez and María González in El Tocuyo or Los Guayos have some chance to get now a Haier washing machine at a tiny fraction of the price they would have to pay at a normal "capitalist" shop (never mind Haier is a capitalist company). They have some chance of getting a Haier refrigerator. They may get some US rice and Nicaraguan black beans and New Zealand or Lithuanian milk at Mercal.

About 60-70% of consumption is subsidized. 3.9 million people are state employees. 45% of households get some kind of "Misiones", most importantly food.

We used to export a little bit of agricultural products. Now we import even black beans from Nicaragua and virtually all the rest. Your farmer doesn't have a job as a farmer, but he can sell Chinese gadgets and Peruvian panties on the streets and perhaps his cousin works for the council and his children get black beans from Nicaragua, so: what's the problem?

Don't tell them they could have much better schools than they have now if they can't even imagine how those schools may look like. Don't tell them about really decent hospitals or libraries. What reference they have? When did they get such things? As for violent crime: incredibly, even if the murder rate has tripled, most poor - the most affected by crime - don't feel that's the government's responsibility.

Who has told them about making Venezuela a developed nation? Nobody.

Very few Venezuelans think about how oil prices will be next year. They are probably right for next year, and perhaps for the one after that. And those who do just count on oil prices remaining at the same level for years and years to come. Even the best informed think anything will just drive oil prices higher and higher for many decades to come. And how many of us will be alive in 2070? And who has done the maths about how many persons will be living in Venezuela in 2015 and how many barrels of oil we will not be consuming ourselves but exporting?

So: Juan and I will be seen as callous, grumpy men for a long time.

But Venezuelans will face other realities sooner than they think. After the elections.

¿Eres venezolano y vives en el extranjero?

2012-01-24T15:00:00.000-08:00

Entonces revisa de vez en cuando la siguiente página si quieres enterarte de dónde serán las elecciones primarias más cerca de ti.

Heute abend: die letzte Debatte

2012-01-23T14:31:00.000-08:00

Heute abend, um 20:00 venezolanischer Zeit, wird die letzte Debatte der Vorwahl für die Opposition stattfinden. Die sechs Vorkandidaten der alternativen Parteien werden in Globovisión auftreten und wieder diskutieren bzw plaudern. Was erwarte ich? Nichts überraschendes. Die Aktion werden wir erst nach dem 12.2.2012 finden: dann wird der Kandidat bzw die Kandidatin der alternativen Parteien gewählt sein. Dann wird eine bestimmte Person gegen den Militärcaudillo auftreten. Was empfehle ich? Er oder sie muss dann Chávez dazu zwingen, eine Reihe von Debatten zu akzeptieren oder erkennen, dass er nicht in der Lage ist, öffentlich mit jemandem zu diskutieren, ohne die Kontrolle zu verlieren. Es ist sicher, dass Chávez ein offenes Gespräch unter allen Umständen vermeiden wird. Der Kandidat der alternativen Parteien muss aber darauf bestehen und zwar immer wieder und bis zum Tag vor der Wahl.

Die erzkonservative spanische Zeitung sagt nun, Chávez habe angeblich weniger als ein Jahr zu leben, wenn er sich bald nicht einer strengen Behandlung für seinen Prostatakrebs unterzieht, was er seit langem nicht mehr tun würde. Was halte ich davon? Ich bin eher skeptisch...und es ist sowieso egal: Venezuela sitzt auf mehreren Zeitbomben und die hangen nicht mehr vom Leben oder Tod eines einzigen Menschen. Alle Venezolaner guten Willens müssen zusammen Lösungen finden und offene Debatten - nicht parallele Monologen fordern und fördern.

Und da liegt's: Debatten, was Venezolaner bis heute nicht wirklich kennen.

I got post from Belgium

2012-01-21T03:02:00.000-08:00

One year ago I wrote to the Francophone Socialist Party of Belgium (PS) to demand an explanation about a politician from that party who had visited Venezuela on several occasions, Ms Bouarfa, a senator for Brussels and former senator at the federal level. Ms Bouarfa vehemently defended military caudillo Chávez and talked very negatively about all the rest, including real social democratic parties.

Belgium has been in a political negotiations to build a government for one and a half years (a world record), so I only got an answer now. A representative of Mr Di Rupo answered. I put here just the part that concerns us the most (the rest is basically apologies for the delay, greetings):

"Nous avons bien pris connaissance des propos tenus par Madame Bouarfa à la suite de sa visite au Venezuela. Madame Bouarfa n’était pas au Venezuela en qualité de représentante du Parti Socialiste et s’est exprimée en son nom personnel.

Le Parti Socialiste belge, dans le cadre de l’Internationale socialiste notamment, suit attentivement la situation politique vénézuélienne. Le Parti Socialiste unifié du Venezuela n’est d’ailleurs pas membre de l’Internationale socialiste."

My free translation:

We have taken notice of the comments made by Ms Bourafa after her visit to Venezuela. Ms Bouarfa was not in Venezuela as representative of the Socialist Party and she expressed herself on her own behalf only. The Socialist Party of Belgium, particularly in the context of the Socialist International, attentively follows the political situation in Venezuela. The United Socialist Party of Venezuela is also not member of the Socialist International".

Thanks to the PS for that clarification. Next time Ms Bouarfa goes to Venezuela invited by the Chávez-dominated Consejo Supremo Electoral, she should be aware of this. She shouldn't be saying she is representing some official EU or Belgium governmental anything.

Venezuela's military government and graph theory

2012-01-19T13:06:00.000-08:00

The first graph shows just a very small subset of the ministries and ministers since military Hugo Chávez is president of Venezuela. In these days we are hearing about the latest changes.

The Knight's Tour Puzzle? Doesn't apply. Each knight - or rather, each Boligarch - visits each square zero, one, two or more times, with no apparent reason. Tower of Hanoi? Doesn't apply either. Hugo moves several disks at a time, with no apparent pattern. The Minimal Connector Problem? What are the vertices here and what does it mean to have a cycle here? Going back to a ministry?

Venezuelan politics offers new graph puzzles. I will come back to this in a few days.

Debatte der Opposition

2012-01-17T16:46:00.000-08:00

Ich fange spät an.
Siehe hier

1:45 Pérez: Investitionen, Investitionen

1:46 Medina: hat keine Ahnung...oder doch: Strassenbau, Autobahnen ausbauen...und Stadien???

1:47 Machado kennt unsere Strassen. Wer tut was? fragt sie. Internationale Finanzierung kann nötig sein. Machado wird internationale Abkommen anerkennen, solange sie koscher sind.

Scheissalarm, um Zeitfrist anzudeuten.

1:50 López will auch Konzessionen.

Scheissalarm. Ist dies ein Videospiel oder eine Debatte?
Journalist kann sich nicht ausdrücken.

1:51 López wiederholt: Sicherheit und dann Infrastruktur. Er will eine Million Jobs in Tourismus...nur in Hotels. Hallo?

1:53 Arrias will Enteignungen auf dem Land rückgängig machen und vor allem seine Hazienda zurück.

1:54: Pérez: Zulia ist die Hauptstadt der Karibik. Er hat 10000 Stimmen verloren.

1:59: Medina will katholisches Fe-y-Alegría-System als Mass aller Dinge in der Bildung in Venezuela.

2:00: De Villar is Chávez-Anhänger, sagt, es gibt keine Analphabeten mehr in Venezuela. Medina sagt die Wahrheit.

2:03: Machado will Eigentum garantieren.

2:03: María Inés Delgado hat eine schöne Halskette.

2:05: López will die besten Beamten, nicht die treuesten.

2:06: Der Journalist De Villar ist ein Chávez-Anhänger.

2:07: Capriles wieder über Ausbildung, muss aber konkreter sein. Sprich über die PISA-Studie! Schule bauen, ja, aber mehr!

2:10: Man will wisssen, ob Capriles die Abschlüsse der Bildungsprogramme der Chávez-Regierung anerkennen würde. Er redet, die Zeit ist aber um.

2:13: Medina will Erdölproduktion erhöhen und auch "industrialisieren".

2:13: Journalistin behauptet, die Erdölpreise sind so hoch, weil wir weniger produzieren. Falsch: wir produzieren weniger, weil PDVSA zugrunde geht.

2:15: Machedo sagt zum ersten Mal, dass Erdöl in 50 Jahren ersetzt werden kann und dass man das Geld investieren muss. Sie will auch, dass Venezolaner in Erdölproduktion privat investieren.

Journalisten von Panorama sind "rojos-rojitos".

2:22 Capriles sagt, man muss Einkommensquellen anderswo suchen, nicht nur Erdöl.

2:22: Die Chávez-Journalisten haben eine Fixierung mit den internationalen Abkommen.

Machado will kein Referendum, um das Abtreibungsgesetz zu gestalten. Sie will ein öffentlich Gespräch, ist persönlich für Abtreibungen bei Vergewaltigungen, Gesundheitsproblemen, usw.

2:24: Zuschauerin behauptet wieder, die hohen Erdölpreise haben mit der "Kontrolle der Produktion in Venezuela" zu tun. Pérez geht herum. Leider sagt er nicht, was man ansprechen muss: dass die venezolanische Regierung zur Zeit mit den hohen Erdölpreisen nichts zu tun hat.

2:35: Capriles will das öffentliche Gesundheitssystem so gut machen, dass man nicht unbedingt zu den privaten Kliniken gehen muss. Gut.

2:40: Medina will höhere Gehälter für Ärzte und Krankenpfleger. Er kennt die Lage.

Siehe weiter hier.

2:46: Mensch, wird jemand das Wort "Pluralismus" sagen? Das schreckt Chávez ab!

2:53: Medina sagt, Wahlbetrug ist schon programmiert.

2:55: Der älteste Kandidat sagt, er ist die Chance der Jugend.

Monkeying about them, on their faces

2012-01-15T05:05:00.000-08:00

Here you have a nice little slideshow of New World monkeys and some rumblings on face evolution.
The paper didn't seem to have gone very deep into the matter, but the pictures are fine.

Here a mico nocturno or owl monkey

How the Land of Grace is being raped...again

2012-01-12T12:43:00.000-08:00

News come from Venezuela's South-East, news come but only regional newspapers seem to pay attention. In Caracas people don't care a fig about that region. Abroad nobody will now, but you and a couple of others, maybe.

There is gold in that region. For decades now there have been illegal miners there and they have become more and more. The military has always closed one eye while pretending to protect the area.

I read an article in Notitarde about the latest slaughter in one of the illegal mines there. I read between the lines.

There was a fight between several gangs trying to control a gold mine. Lots of people got killed. The military arrived there, again, to stop the fight. Now they are burying the corpses quickly.

When the fight started, there were more than 5000 miners there.

5000 miners using mercury and other poisons in our jungle. 5000 miners who are part of a much bigger group of squatters who are settling down in our jungles, where one of our last First Nations still lives.

Bizarre Venezuela

2012-01-12T07:40:00.000-08:00

The head of the CICPC, the Venezuelan National Police Agency, declared his organisation detained last year 1601 persons for cases of homicide. This statement doesn't tell us much about what happened to them and how many of them killed how many others.

Now, as I said in my German post yesterday, more than 18000 persons have been murdered in Venezuela in the same period. There are many murderers who kill several people, but there will be also cases where several people are involved in murdering one person. In any case, we can assume the Venezuelan police is only capable of detaining less than 1 out of 10 murderers.

If this is not failure and incompetence, I don't know what it is.

The head of the CICPC also said now the police will be tracking down guns and munition to find out the sources. I am perplexed: and what the hell were they doing all this time? Weren't they doing that? When I was a child several decades ago I thought police everywhere in the world were doing that as part of their work, for prevention and more. What has the Venezuelan police being doing in the last 13 years, in a period when the murder rate has more than tripled? Did their directors have their heads stuck in the sand?

Der Caudillo Chávez will leben. Venezolaner sterben wie nie zuvor

2012-01-11T06:55:00.000-08:00

Im Jahr 2011 wurden 18850 Menschen in Venezuela umgebracht. Das entspricht 65 Menschen pro 100 000. Unsere Mordrate ist doppelt so hoch wie die von Kolumbien, viel höher als die von Mexiko oder Brasilien, von Chile ganz zu schweigen.

Als der Caudillo Chávez an die Macht kam, betrug die Mordrate 19 Menschen pro 100000 Einwohner. Das war für uns schon sehr hoch, aber nur ein Bruchteil vom heutigen Stand.

Chávez-Verteidiger im Ausland relativieren diese Entwicklung immer noch: "ja, Chávez hat noch nicht genug getan, um dieses kapitalistisches Übel zu beseitigen...die "Kriminalität (criminalidad)"- würde Prof. Dr. Zeuske vielleicht sagen- "ist eine schwierige Erbe...die alten Strukturen, ja, die alten Strukturen sind schwer zu überwinden".

Chávez sagte vor kurzem folgendes: "die vaterlandslose Opposition will mich für die Ursachen der Kriminalität verantwortlich machen". Unverschämt, oder? Der Caudillo erklärte, es wäre der Kapitalismus, der die soziale Ungerechtigkeit wachsen lässt. Er sagte aber nicht, wieso das im Jahr 13. seiner Amtszeit geschehen kann...ach, der Kapitalismus ist so schwer zu bekämpfen, es gibt immer diese fünfte Kolumne...es gibt immer die anderen...immer die anderen.

Im Municipio Libertador, Caracas, betrug die Mordrate im Jahr 2011 97 x 100000 Einwohner.

Die Chávez-Verteidiger in Europa, die immer noch so gern Mojito trinken und sich als Revolutionäre betrachten, die so gern Spanisch reden und nach Venezuela für Konferenzen reisen, diese Chávez-Verteidiger werden immer noch den Chavismus schön reden...aus Stolz, aus Trotz, oder weil es einfach anders nicht kann...weil sonst alles unsonst gewesen wäre. "Hasta la victoria siempre!" werden sie sagen.

Um 0:15 am 1.1.20.12 wurde ein vierjähriges Mädchen in Antímano - im ärmsten Gebiet Caracas - erschossen, als es mit seiner Oma das Neujahr feierte. Einfach so. Dieses Mädchen war eins von vielen. Chávez aber schreit weiterhin "viviremos y venceremos", wir werden leben und siegen. Es ist nämlich so, dass er seine angebliche Krankheit besiegt hat, genauso wie er "die vaterlandslose Opposition" vernichten will. Wie kann er das nicht tun? Steht er nicht etwa für soziale Gerechtigkeit? Man sieht es, oder?

The Land of Grace, top-down

2012-01-10T14:23:00.000-08:00

The Russian dogs of war and Venezuela

2012-01-09T15:05:00.001-08:00

Venezuelan democrats should look at Syria to understand some dangers ahead.

Now we have more of this even if we do not have enough milk

Russia

has sent rockets to Syria in spite of the massacres against the civilian population
keeps opposing any UN resolution against the repressive Assad government and
is now present in Syria with its navy trying to show to the West it sees Syria as its zone of influence.

You can count on it that Russian specialists are helping Assad's thugs to hunt democrats right now.

How can Russia be doing all this? The reasons are obvious: Syria offers the last base Russia still has in the Fertile Crescent and Syria has been paying a lot of money for Russian weapons. 20% of Russia's manufacturing comes from the defence industry.

Venezuela's military caste is a much more important client than Syria at this stage. Russian officials have already declared it is in Russia's absolute interest for Chávez to continue in power.

Russia gave Venezuela last year alone a loan for 4 billion dollars to buy more weapons. There is no way Russian weapon merchants will want to see a reversal of this pattern.

The Russian ambassador to Venezuela, Vladimir Zaemskyi, already confirmed the Kalashnikov factory in Venezuela will be ready by the end of this year. This is the hardest part because it takes Venezuelans to do: they already promised to have those destruction tools for 2009 and then for 2011.

I have been told there have been several visits of Russians in Venezuela which are being kept on very low profile because the Venezuelan government does not want too much attention.

Russian experts are likely to assist Chavismo with SIGINT more and more. They will also train Venezuelan military honchos more and more to behave like their compradores.

Breasts in Venezuela, Germany and the USA (updated)

2012-01-06T14:28:00.000-08:00

I read in the news today there are about 40000 breast implants in Venezuela a year. I checked out in how many breast implants there were in Germany and the USA last year: about 25000 and 264241 respectively. There are 29 million people in Venezuela. There are a little bit less than 82 million people in Germany.

30.57 women for 100000 persons (thus, for about 50000 females of every age) have a breast implant every year in Germany. 84.3 women for 100000 people have that kind of operation in the US during the same time. In Venezuela, it's 137.9 women per 100 000 inhabitants.

It's weird and it's a pity. I think a few may need that because of some illness or the like. Most don't.

Amnesty International and judge Afiuni

2012-01-06T11:36:00.000-08:00

Amnesty International has submitted an appeal to the Venezuelan government (in Spanish here) demanding the immediate release of judge Afiuni, a judge kept in detention since 2010 because she liberated one of Chávez's enemies.

Even Noam Chomsky, who has kept defending Chávez no matter what, had requested her release. More background on judge Afiuni's case here and here

When will Venezuela's military regime understand it?

Erdölpreise und nachhaltige Entwicklung

2012-01-02T10:54:00.000-08:00

Die Hälfte der Venezolaner kapieren es es immer noch nicht. Heute, nachdem ich über die Erdölpreise in Nigerien gelesen habe, habe ich mal kurz in meinem spanischen Blog über die Erdölpreise in Venezuela geschrieben. Ich habe kurz versucht, zu erklären, wieso die Venezolaner so bald wie möglich verstehen müssen, dass Benzin nicht so billig sein kann. Und siehe, da kommt einer im Nu und erklärt folgendes (meine Übersetztung):

"Das Erdöl gehört allen Venezolanern. Es ist kein Geschenk, es ist ihr Eigentum und es wird als solches benutzt. Würden Sie auf einem Esel reiten, wenn Sie ein Auto hätten? Das Reichtum eines Landes gehört denen, die in diesem Land geboren sind. Wollen Sie, dass der Verwalter einem reichen Kind mit Palästen befiehlt, in einer Hütte zu leben, nur weil man Geld sparen muss? Die Politiker an der Macht sind nur dafür, unser Eigentum zu verwalten [von wegen verwalten]. Möge Gott Ihnen Weissheit geben und Ihnen die Augen aufmachen, damit Sie verstehen können, was sich das Volk wünscht, nicht, was Sie sich wünschen.".

Dieser Venezolaner sieht nicht ein, dass die Armen eher kein Auto haben und superbilliges Benzin eher eine Subvention für die Reichen ist, dass man Mechanismen einführen, um den öffentlichen Verkehr für die Armen billig zu halten, dass man dieses Erdöl besser exportiert, um damit mehr Geld für Infrastruktur und für nachhaltige Entwicklung im allgemeinen zu haben.

Seufz...die haben nie über Opportunitätskosten gehört...und sie glauben immer noch, in Venezuela befände sich El Dorado.

Ideas for Venezuela: what about transparency? The Access to Information Act

2011-12-31T03:09:00.000-08:00

Take a look at this BBC article on the Access to Information Act. That legislation will enshrine in the Brazilian constitution the right of citizens to request information from public officials on their administration and to receive prompt response. The article also contains some references to new movements that promote transparency elsewhere, particularly in the EU.

As Edward Eastwick, an English visitor to dilapidated Venezuela during the aftermath of the Federal War wrote, the main problem in my country is not the lack of law but the absolute disregard of it. Back then a Venezuelan told him the reasons and the possible solutions to overcome that mess: education and more education. And yet we keep talking about education today and things haven't changed. Education became a senseless mantra. Education improved somewhat in the XX century, but it became diluted. Old habits never died: education for most people became more rote learning than ever, non-actionable data to be wasted after a few years. And people just got used to think Venezuela is what it is: corruption and dependency on oil is here to stay.

How can we overcome this? Is it possible at all or will Venezuela become more and more the failed state living off oil until the next energy age?

The Chávez government, we have seen this already, is absolutely reluctant to allow Venezuela to take part in transparency mechanisms such as the PISA programme on education measurement. The military caudillo in power is resolute to avoid any public debate - when Peruvian writer challenged him to a debate, Chávez said he, Chávez, "was just a soldier", later to say he would only participate in a debate if his "intellectuals" - sycophants like Britto García, and others also take part in it - i.e. he would stand behind them.

What can the democratic movement do?

Venezuela's resources for the military regime and its honchos

We need to keep challenging the caudillo time after time to have an open, fair series of debates between him and the elected candidate from February's elections - no parallel monologues.
We need to distribute information across the secondary cities of Venezuela about how other countries implement transparency measures and what they are doing right now to improve transparency and accountability.
We have to distribute information about how the government is misusing the unprecedented petrodollar stream (not even the seventies come close to it). This last part is a hard task. You cannot just go on a TV channel that can only be watched by 30% of the population and start throwing numbers at people. You need to go to them and explain things in a very visual way.

Those are some of the things we need to do next year.

And I wish you a successful 2012 to you all!

Venezuelan genes continued

2011-12-30T15:27:00.000-08:00

A couple of months ago a new paper on population genetics on Venezuela appeared: "A Melting Pot of Multicontinental mtDNA Lineages in Admixed Venezuelans", by Gómez Caraballo et alia. The work has very fascinating insights into our genetic structure. Still, I have some questions about the general method.

You get these mitochondria from your mum alone

Scientists used data from Caracas and Pueblo Llano mainly to determine how the native American component was reflected in both groups. The assumption was that new flows of immigrants to Caracas had displaced the Amerindian element there whereas this element would be much stronger in the countryside. Pueblo Llano is a very isolated village in the lowlands of the otherwise very mountainous Mérida state.

I have reported in a couple of previous posts how we Venezuelans are mostly European from the "extreme" paternal side (father's father's father's...) and "mostly" native American from the "maternal" side (mother's mother's mother's), with African American on both sides as well (but less so in general). This study didn't show otherwise, but it focused on the native American part. This is all relative: you can have an African American mtDNA and your mother can look very European and you can have an European Y haplogroup and your dad looks more African or native American (the last one being much less the case in Venezuela, as male Indians were basically out-bred).

Of the 199 samples from Pueblo Llano 177 persons had native American, 8 African American (4%) and 14 European (6%) haplogroups. The native American component in Pueblo Llano is stronger than in Caracas. This is not surprising. The African American component in Pueblo Llano was much smaller than in Caracas, where 20% had African haplotypes. This is not surprising either, we from history: there were more African slaves close to and in Caracas than in the Llanos or Andean regions.

There are more interesting things: they discovered new haplotypes of the native American A and B mtDNA haplogroups. They also confirmed the A2 clade is predominant in the Pueblo Llano area, just as in Caracas...but unlike in two studies carried out on the Yanomamö. The Yanomamö Indians have a completely different language from Caribs, who still inhabit some tiny regions in South Eastern and Eastern Venezuela and who occupied central and most of Northern central Venezuela when the Europeans arrived in 1498 and Arawaks, who still live in some areas in the Amazonas state as well as in Northwestern Zulia and who also occupied some other areas around current Coro. Their language is also quite different from that of the now extinct Timoto-Cuicas, who inhabited most of the Merida area but who rapidly merged with the Spanish settlers.

There is one item I don't find very academic. They write "native American mtDNA component is by far the most prevalent in present day urban Venezuelans (80%), whereas it is much more frequent in Pueblo Llano ( 90%) than in Caracas ( 65%)." The native American component as reflected by mtDNA is indeed clearly prevalent, but "urban Venezuela" cannot be deduced by simply by calculating the mean from the largest city in Venezuela by far and an extremely isolated area that is much smaller than the average Venezuelan town in the interior. Most Venezuelans (about 70% of the total population) live in cities with more than 100 000 inhabitants but less than one million. The population dynamics from the Eastern side of Mérida and the Western side and central valleys are also completely different from the dynamics in Bejuma or Margarita (even considering Margarita inhabitants with all grandparents born in the island). So: I think a more systematic approach needs to be taken in the future to determine "average populations".

Still, this study discovered a couple of new branches in the A and B maternal haplogroups. There is some material that adds to existing databases and that will help us in the future to establish possible migration routes for pre-Colombian South America.

It would be great, among other things, to find the closest matches to the Yanomamö within the Americas and to carry out genetic studies on the Carib groups Pemon and Yekwana to see how distant they are, both by mtDNA and Y chromosome sequences. It could be also very interesting to examine further other groups, like the Arutani Sape, if it is not too late.

Chavicide timeline

2011-12-29T03:27:00.000-08:00

In an effort to put a little bit of perspective to Venezuela's magic history, I decided to update the record of presumed attempts of assassination against the current president, Hugo Chávez. This is not an easy task. Mr Chávez has been in power since February 1999 and newspapers in Venezuela are not very systematic, to put it mildy, about keeping track of things. Still, I was able to find the major landmarks by trivial Internet search.

The red ovals show when the government in Venezuela or the one in Cuba announced about a major attempt against the life of Hugo Chávez. So far, no one has been jailed and I don't recall having seen any proof, but who am I to judge against the wind?

I wrote in Spanish a reference to news articles about each of those announcements here.

The green lines show 1) when the bones of idolized Simón Bolívar were exhumed (July 2010) to find out if US president Andrew Jackson or his accomplices killed Bolívar all the way back in 1830 and 2) when results were announced (July 2011). These results were inconclusive - to say the least -, something Chávez did not like.

The last major announcement of a presumed assassination attempt against Chávez ("magnicidios") was last December and we had a couple of months of relative silence. Then the big drama came when Chávez announced he had cancer, then how he was fighting it and how he had completely recovered. Yesterday, though, the president hinted that cancer may have to do with a US plot against him and some of his president-friends who also have cancer.

Cancer in South America (updated)

2011-12-28T05:16:00.000-08:00

Chávez announced in the middle of this year that he had cancer (sort of announced it). The former head of state of Brazil, Lula, announced in October that he had throat cancer. The president of Paraguay went to hospital the same month because he was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. Now we hear the president of Argentina has thyroid cancer.

What is it? Coincidence?

Now I get the news, with delay, that Chávez hinted the United States of America is behind it all.

Now we know what we are going to hear in the next 10 months.

The price of life in Venezuela

2011-12-28T02:07:00.000-08:00

The ONG Observatorio Venezolano de Violencia informs us there were about 19336 murders in Venezuela in 2011. That means a murder rate of about 66 murders per 100 000 inhabitants. It is about 38 in Colombia and 2 in Chile now. In 1998 Venezuelans were shocked at the murder rate they had: 19 x 100 000. Now half of them got completely used to it: they resent it, but they see is as Scots see the weather. Whereas East German professor Zeuske relativizes the increase in the murder rate (more on that in another post), right now Venezuela's got the highest murder rate in South America by far and that was not the case before Chávez. There was an increase in violence already after 1983, but that rate was still similar to the rate during the Gómez times, over 80 years ago (from about 10 to 19), and much lower than in other Latin American countries back then.

When Chávez announced he had cancer, he changed his slogan from "Fatherland, socialism or death" to "To live living" (sic). He kept tweeting "We will live, we will live" and similar things and his followers started to repeat his words like parrots. What they didn't notice: it's about his life.

What's the matter? What is quite special in Venezuela, as Kronick reports, is that the murder rate is not affecting Chávez in the polls: the poor, who are the most affected by violent crime, do not relate that crime with Chávez. I will go over the different hypothesis people have given to this phenomenon in a new post, next year. One of the key issues: risk perception.

Venezuela bleeding and the military caste buying more weapons

2011-12-26T15:50:00.000-08:00

I stumbled upon a new article in the Russian press about the weapons industry in this year. A Russian magazine in that sector, ЦАМТО, produced some interesting statistics on the business of killing tools.

It lists the nations that spent the most in weapon imports in 2011. The top ten arms importers were the following:

India
United Arab Emirates
Australia
Saudi Arabia
South Korea
Iraq
USA (which is also the main exporter)
Venezuela
Turkey and
Pakistan

Top weapons' importers

Above you can see a chart showing the amounts in million dollars. Venezuela, for instance, is sending $2,33 billion abroad in weapons. As the Russian news agency RIA says, Venezuela actually got into more than 4 billion dollars debt with Russia this year for weapons, so I assume part of the money will be technically spent next year.

Some Chávez apologists try to justify this all saying military expenses get a bigger share of the national budget in the US than in Venezuela. I am not sure about that anymore. Most of the imports for this year are in the form of a debt to Russia that will probably be paid, as before, by means of the FONDEN, the Venezuelan Fund for Development or Chávez's Personal Piggy Bank, redirected through different obscure mechanisms. The budget for defence in Venezuela is thus just a part of what the government spends for the military caste and its amigos. 49,9% of shares in Moznabank, a bank to be used in buying weapons, was paid with money from FONDEN, as the Central Bank of the Russian Federation stated.

Next year Venezuela's "explicit" defence budget is going to epresent 6.5% of the national budget, much more than this year. Some high ranking Chávez officials are very happy...and so is former KGB and Putin's pal Igor Sechin, who has seen to it a lot of the defence deals between Venezuela and Russia become a reality.

The money for weapons is sent completely to other countries and does not generate investment in other technologies (not like the DARPA programme in the USA or similar programmes in Europe or China, Israel or Brazil).

Venezuela should be spending that money in biologists and physicians, in farmers and police agents, in electronic engineers and in setting up research centres, in building real houses and real roads. It is instead spending it in the military structures that claim to be "revolutionary" and are just there to guarantee that Chávez clan remains in power.

People anywhere have the right to criticise the US government for all its spending in defence -and I am one of those who do that, but we, Venezuelans, should be more than mad at our government, which is getting the country further away from sustainable development.

Igor Sechin, former KGB and now key man in the weapons business with Venezuela

Big Brother or Fat Brother, same thing

2011-12-26T04:50:00.000-08:00

Our military caudillo, Hugo Chávez, sent a message of Merry Christmas to all Venezuelans with a mobile phone, whether they wanted or not, whether they had a service with the state phone company or not.

On the right you can see the message:

"Each December, during this time, we victoriously celebrate our unstoppable march to the Good And Beautiful Fatherland...

full of happiness and justice and social equality.

Merry Christmas, comrades. Hugo Chávez".

Just creepy. There is no rule of law, there is no separation of powers. There is Hugo. As for happiness, take a look here. As for justice, go here, here and here. As for social equality, take a look at the same links as for justice and this and this.

Hat off to Ernex for the snapshot.

Venezuela in 1830-1835 (updated)

2011-12-25T03:45:00.000-08:00

If you want to take a look at what Venezuela was almost 200 years ago, at least in the eyes of an Englishman, you can google and download for free "Reminiscences of South America, from two and a half years' residence in Venezuela" by John Hawkshaw.

It's fun to read specially chapter X and XII. Pages 168-172, 218-219, 222-223 are particularly interesting.

This was Caracas back then

Frohe Weihnachten und ein gutes 2012! Merry Christmas and a great 2012! ¡Feliz Navidad y lo mejor para el 2012!

2011-12-23T13:32:00.000-08:00

Orinoco goose or Ganso de Monte

Die venezolanische Regierung, Václav Havel und Kim Jong Il

2011-12-19T13:04:00.000-08:00

Ratet mal, wen die Chavez-Bonzen verehren!

Gestern starb der tschechische Schriftsteller und Politiker Václav Havel. Er hatte öffentlich die Regierung des Militärs Chávez u.a. wegen der Festnahme des Oppositionspolitikers Oswaldo Álvarez Paz kritisiert. Die Chávez-Regierung hat nichts gesagt. Die Regierungspropagandamaschine hat den Tod zwar erwähnt, nichts aber von seiner Rolle als Dissident unter dem Sozialismus erzählt.

Heute starb Kim Jong-il, der nordkoreanische Diktator. Die Chávez-Regierung hat prompt einen Brief veröffentlicht, wo der venezolanische Caudillo sein Bedauern über den Tod des nordkoreanischen Führers ausdrückte. Chávez hatte vor einigen Jahren den Wunsch ausgedrückt, Nordkorea besuchen zu wollen, ob einfach nur, weil er halt auch zu diesem exotischen Ziel reisen oder halt die Gringos provozieren wollten, wissen wir nicht. Einige seiner Minister hatten schon vorher ihre Verehrung für die nordkoreanische Regierung geäussert. Der Minister für Planung, Jorge Giordani, schrieb zum Beispiel im Jahr 1997, dass sich Nordkorea durch den Sozialismus zu einer starken Volkswirtschaft entwickelt hatte. Das war kurz vor einer der grössten Hungerkatastrophen des Landes.

Nein, Venezuela ist noch keine Diktatur, genauso wenig wie Russland. In beiden Ländern kann man überall sagen, man sei in einer Diktatur. Wir wissen, dass man das in einer Diktatur gar nicht sagen darf. In Venezuela darf man immer noch sagen, Chávez sei autoritär. Venezuela ist also keine Diktatur. Es ist nur ein von einem lächelnden Autokrat geleiteter Zirkus, ohne Rechtsstaat.

A great writer and statesman died

2011-12-18T07:41:00.000-08:00

Famous Czech writer Vaclav Havel died today.

I had friends in Czechoslovakia during communist times and I got to know from very close how they were kept under opression, under fear. Their government told them how the world was supposed to look like.

I kept hoping for them to be free one day. And then I followed with excitement when Czechs and Slovaks started to protest, to demand democracy, pluralism and transparency. I got letters from my friends so full of joice. It was impossible not to be moved with them.

Mr Havel had fought for human rights in his country from early on. He was one of the signataries of the Charter 77. He, a prominent writer, was forced to work at a brewery, he was put in prison on numerous occasions. He kept his spirit high, his faith unbroken. It was only natural that he would lead the way and thus, he became the first president of his country in freedom. And he managed the transission in an excellent manner.

After the Czech and Slovak Republics became free, he decided not to rest. He went on promoting pluralism and democracy all over the world. And he also supported Venezuelan democratic parties in their efforts and denounced Chávez's pseudo-democracy.

Mr Havel will be missed. Děkuju, pane Havel!

I need thee! plus The 24 hour ant

2011-12-17T14:46:00.000-08:00

OK, the year is ending and I would be very thankful to get some feedback from you.

What would you like to read more about in this blog? Please, take a minute to click on the topics that interest you the most or, if you don't see what you were looking for, send me a message at desarrollo.sostenible.venezuela at g mail dot com.

Thanks!

And here you have the Paraponera clavata or Hormiga 24 (24 hour ant, after the time you'll have to endure pair if it bites you)

More education for Venezuela

2011-12-16T13:19:00.000-08:00

Here you can see the mean results for performance in reading according to the PISA test. Even it is well under the OECD average, the state of Miranda shows a better performace than Colombia and Brazil and Argentina, countries that have been taking part in this programme for some time.

I am sure Miranda has one of the highest levels within Venezuela. Kudos to the education team of the Miranda government. It could probably do better if the Chávez government were not sabotaging as it does.

The truth about education in Venezuela (updated 2)

2011-12-16T05:21:00.000-08:00

The results of the famous OECD PISA test on scholastic performance have just been published for pupils of Miranda, Venezuela (more here). For the last couple of years I have been trying, together with other Venezuelans, to promote the implementation of the PISA programme for our country. We asked the national government on several occassions to let Venezuela take part. It refused. It ignored us. It prefers to declare to the world that UNESCO certified Venezuela as free of illiteracy, even if such a statement is based on a self-assessment study conducted by the Chávez government and provided to UNESCO without independent control. The current government hates transparency and open, real debate (it prefers parallel monologues).

Venezuelan pupils finally took the same tests that German ones take

The government of Miranda, led by opposition politician Henrique Capriles, accepted the challenge and got the pupils from Miranda-controlled schools tested by the OECD. The Chávez government tried to sabotage this by blocking the financing (Miranda needed to pay for some fees in dollars and the central government controls the use of foreign money like in old Soviet times, unless it's money for tourism or the like).

What are the results? They are very much in line with what I expected. Perhaps they are a little bit better than my expectations, actually. Miranda pupils score well below the OECD average, but rather close to pupils of other Latin American nations like Colombia or Mexico. Venezuelan pupils do worse in maths than other Latin American pupils, which is something I very much expected, as I have written earlier. With these results you can understand to some extent what kind of problems we are facing...and start thinking about specific solutions.

Still: Miranda is not Venezuela. Although Miranda is a very varied region, with highly skilled people next to people with little formal education, rich and poor to very poor neighbourhoods, it is still close to the capital and thus closer to a strong flow of ideas. Miranda is also governed by civilians from the opposition and not by a military government.

This is a good start in order to bring about transparency to education in Venezuela. I will be posting a lot about this in the next weeks.

PS. I NOW got some more feedback about the problem with the standards: apparently the Chavez government did not suply the required information that PISA also needed to make a better comparison. Shame on Chavismo.

Did Ambrosius Ehinger have sex between September and December of 1530?

2011-12-13T14:53:00.000-08:00

Ambrosius Ehinger was a German conquistador in XVI century Venezuela. In Venezuela and in the Spanish history Ehinger was mostly known as Alfinger. That's a very rare name in Germany. He arrived to the Land of Grace as first governor of the Welser concession in 1529. He led German and Spanish troops across Northern and Western Venezuela and Eastern Colombia on several quests for El Dorado from then until 1533, when some Chitarero Indians killed him. He had been plundering, exploring, plundering, exploring, making friends and foes through terra incognita to Europeans, across some incredibly harsh regions.

From history we know Europeans started settling Western Venezuela in Coro, with Ampies and the Welser, but they soon left that arid place and moved to more fertile areas along the El Tocuyo River up to Carora and from El Tocuyo to Nueva Valencia and ultimately towards Caracas.

I analyzed the electoral records we have from Venezuela. This is weird. Below you see the distribution of voters per state with the very strange name Alfinger. Each dot represents a voter with that surname.

It would be interesting to check out their Y haplotype.

Surnames were becoming customary in the Spanish world earlier than in other regions. Still, Venezuela back then was not a place where Europeans tended to marry and register long-term relationships with native Americans. And yet it seems as if some people started to use that very distinct surname in one of the regions where that Conquistador was active. Did they just take over that name as remembrance of a myth? Or were they indeed the descendants of that Southern German Conquistador?

Take a look at the following IDs, for instance:

CI 19974901
CI 19974902

Chávez-Anhänger und der Universitätsbrand

2011-12-11T14:16:00.000-08:00

Chávez-Anhänger können, soviel sie wollen, die öffentlichen Universitäten nicht unter ihrer Kontrolle bringen. Die Studenten wollen sie nicht. Und so verlor der Chavismus - schon wieder- die neusten Wahlen für den Studentenrat der Universidad Central de Venezuela. Der Kandidat der Regierung, Kevin Ávila, hat nur 500 Stimmen bekommen, während die anderen drei Kandidaten etwa 7700 Stimmen erzielt haben.

Wie haben die Chávez-Anhänger dann reagiert? Sie sind auf ihren Motorädern in die Universität eingedrungen, sie haben die Studenten angegriffen, die Stimmanlagen zerstört und den Eingang der Aula Magna in Brand gesteckt.

Ihr könnt damit rechnen, dass die Chávez-Anhänger weiterhin diese Einstellung haben werden.

Mehr Infos auf Englisch hier

Angela Merkel sagt, sie wird den Sieger der Bundestagswahlen von 2012 anerkennen

2011-12-06T13:03:00.000-08:00

Stellt Euch vor, die Merkel würde plötzlich eine Pressekonferenz halten und dort ausländischen Journalisten mitteilen, sie wird den Sieger der Kanzlerwahl im nächsten Jahr anerkennen, wer auch immer das sein mag. Stellt Euch vor, sie fügt folgendes hinzu: Fragt mal die SPD, fragt mal die Grünen, ob sie in der Lage sind, das zu sagen, was ich Euch jetzt gesagt habe". Würdet Ihr da kein mulmiges Gefühl haben?

Heute hat der venezolanische Caudillo Hugo Chávez genau das gesagt. Müssen wir Venezolaner "danke" sagen? Hat's er nötig?

Seltsame Demokratie haben wir.

Venezuelan classic for winter or summer times, for any time

2011-12-05T13:38:00.000-08:00

Billo's

Venezuela, 1920

2011-12-03T13:51:00.000-08:00

In the map* below you can see per each state of Venezuela the amount of citizens per pupil for the year 1920.

So: in Zulia, to the West, 1 out of 23 inhabitants was a pupil. Considering the age distribution of Venezuela back then, it means just a tiny minority of children was going to school. In the Llanos the situation was much worse, though. In Barinas, for instance, only 1 out of 105 persons was at that moment going to school. In the Delta (to the East), it was only 1 out of 113. The average child had almost 5 more chances to be attending school if he was living in or around Caracas, Valencia or Maracaibo than in the Llanos or many other places. And still most were not going to school. Only my maternal grandmother, living close to Valencia, went to school - for two full years. My other grandmother was illiterate and my grandfather had a similar education as my maternal grandmother - who was single parent.

The situation improved a lot after 1940, specially quantitatively. My parents, like most others, profited from that. Still, the difference between the average level in Caracas and a few other places and the "countryside" was and still is enormous. And what many people don't understand: that "countryside" is now full of middle-size cities. It's no longer just rural but home to millions...and it keeps being extremely backward.

*I derived this data from this fascinating German book compared with Venezuela's census for 1920.

Venezuela, just second worst

2011-12-01T12:13:00.000-08:00

Today Transparency International produced its yearly report...and Venezuela takes a specially place in the American continent one more time. And uet: we are just second worst. Haiti beat us to it.

You can check it out here.

Thanks to our "revolutionary" Bolivarianos.

Venezuela is more corrupt than 171 other countries now.

Scarlet star

2011-12-01T00:56:00.000-08:00

The Guzmania lingulata is a plant you can find in tropical Central and South America, including Venezuela. Guzmania is a genus called after Anastasio Guzmán, a Spanish scientist of the XVIII and start of the XIX century.

Ist Chávez bescheuert und durchgeknallt?

2011-12-01T00:25:00.000-08:00

Unsere kleine Umfrage ergab folgendes:

88% von Euch denkt, dass der Militärcaudillo Chávez tatsächlich grosse psychiatrische Probleme hat

8% denkt das nicht

4% hat keine Ahnung.

Natürlich war diese Umfrage nicht gerade wissenschaftlich, man hat aber schon einen Eindruck über das, was Deutschsprachigen über den geistigen Zustand unseres Präsidenten denken.

Ob er so krank ist oder nicht, hat er immer noch eine sehr kräftige Waffe: Erdölgelder ohne Kontrolle. Wie der Blogger Miguel und andere herausgefunden haben, hat die venezolanische Regierung Verträge mit China abgeschlossen, wonach Erdöl an die Asiaten verkauft werden, um Darlehen so schnell wie möglich zu bekommen. Ein grosser Teil des Geldes wird dann ohne jede Aufsichtskontrolle von Chávez selbst benutzt. Das Geld wird nämlich zu einem Fond geschickt wird, der nur von der Zentralregierung verwaltet wird. Das Gesetz sagt, dass die Nationalversammlung die Verwendung der Erdöleinkommen bewilligen muss, was hier nicht passiert. Ein Teil dieser Ressourcen geht an das Programm "Misión del Buen Vivir", Mission des Guten Lebens, das Venezolaner billige chinesische Geräte verkauft. Es handelt sich um Milliarden Dollar.

Die venezolanische Regierung wollte eigentlich ein Darlehen von über 100 Milliarden Dollar von den Chinesen, wie man nun aus einigen Dokumenten entnehmen kann. Die Ausländer haben darüber nur gelacht. Man fragt sich, wie schlecht die gegenwärtige venezolanische Regierung sein kann, um während eines solchen Erdölbooms - der längste in unserer Geschichte - so viele Darlehen nötig zu haben.

Wahlen sind Wahlen und die Militärs können sich gar nicht leisten, viele Stimmen zu verlieren. Es geht einfach nicht.

Pérez who? The average Venezuelan

2011-11-24T08:18:00.000-08:00

Doing some automatic processing on Venezuela's electoral records can be fun. When we talk about the Venezuelan Joe Doe in Venezuela we often refer to "Pedro Pérez". In reality, Pérez is not the most common surname. Every region tends to show a different "most common surname" (founder effect someone?), in spite of the relatively high mobility we have seen for centuries and immigration rates Venezuela experienced particularly before the current caudillo came to power.

You will see in the first chart the voters' distribution per surname and birth year in the Eastern state of Sucre. The second chart has the distribution for the Western state of Zulia. Rodríguez and González are the most frequent surnames in Sucre. In Zulia the most frequent surnames are González (by far) and far away, Fernández. In any case: the abundance of González in Zulia is quite overwhelming. Pérez is not even in the top 10 there.

Founder effect in Zulia?

Hat ein Deutscher dies geklaut oder wirklich "mit Zustimmung" bekommen?

2011-11-23T07:41:00.000-08:00

Die Pemon-Indianer sagen, dass ein Deutscher einen heiligen Stein aus ihrer Region ohne Erlaubnis entfernt hat. Der Deutscher, ein gewisser Wolfgang Kraker Schwarzenfeld, sagt, er hätte den Stein mit Erlaubnis der Pemones 1999 bekommen. Zur Zeit befindet sich dieser Stein in im Berlin-Tiergarten. Die venezolanischen Behörden verlangen schon seit 2003 die Rückgabe dieses Steins. Es wäre gut, wenn die deutsche Botschaft in Venezuela ihre Meinung dazu geben könnte. Es wäre noch besser, wenn wir alle Informationen über diesen Fall öffentlich diskutieren könnten.

Priorities of the Bolivarian "revolution"

2011-11-19T04:22:00.000-08:00

Minister for Foreign Affairs Nicolas Maduro declared the current Venezuelan government supports Carlos, the Jackal, in everything it can.

Chavez had more than once said the Jackal is a revolutionary fighter.

Venezuela's most notorious terrorists sits here

I wish this government would support other Venezuelans abroad in the same way even if they are not terrorists. I would actually prefer the Venezuelan government to support Venezuelans in Venezuela, the country in South America with the highest murder rate by far...higher than that of war-torn Colombia.

The murder rate in Venezuelan prisons has increased by 33% since last year - so far, as the total numbers are up to September-. 487 prisoners have been killed in the jails of the V Republic from January to that month.

Michael Zeuske, die Chávez-Regierung und Geschichte Venezuelas

2011-11-18T05:51:00.000-08:00

Ich lese gerade Michael Zeuskes Von Bolívar zu Chávez. Ich werde später gründlich über die Ungenauigkeiten dieses Buches gründlich schreiben. Hier will ich nur mal versuchen, einen Überblick über die Vorgeschichte dieses Buches zu kreieren.

Prof. Dr. Zeuske ist Dozent von Geschichte an der Universität Köln. Ich habe schon einen Post über ihn geschrieben, um seine Aussage zu relativieren, wonach Chávez kein Caudillo, sondern bloss "ein Linksnationalist" sei.

Zeuskes Vater, Max Zeuske, war auch Historiker...in der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik. Er schrieb u.a. solche Werke wie "Interpretaciones y ensayos marxistas acerca de Simón Bolívar." Max Zeuske war auch auf Kuba tätig und zwar vom Anfang an der "Revolution". In der DDR konnte man über Marxismus fast in den Kochrezepten lesen, aber nicht jeder musste darüber schreiben. Zeuske junior hat auch in der DDR studiert. Welche Stellung er der DDR gegenüber eigentlich hat, weiss ich nicht. Man kann aber schon seine Stellung zur politischen Lage in Venezuela in seinen Texten erfahren.

Selbst die Marxisten wollten Bolívar für sich benutzen - nicht nur trotz Marx

Die Regierung Venezuelas hat seit vielen Jahrzehnten ab und zu den Bolivarkult auch im Ausland promoviert. Die Aktionen beschränkten sich aber meistens auf die Übergabe einiger Statuen hier und da.

Seitdem die Militärs mit Chávez zurück an der Macht sind, ist das anders: der Caudillo fühlt mehr denn je, dass er den Personankult um Bolívar fördern muss, um sich als Bolívar 2.0 zu porträtieren...nicht, dass der Bolívar 1.0 wirklichkeitsnah wäre, wie Prof. Rehrmann meisterhaft für deutsche Leser erklären konnte. Die Chávez-Regierung hat schon im Jahr 1999 einen Lehrstuhl Simón Bolívar an der Universität Bonn "unterstützt". Wie diese Unterstützung aussah, weiss ich nicht. Chávez war selbst dabei, als der Lehrstuhl eröffnet wurde (ich bezweifle, dass er aber Deutschland jemals wieder besuchen wird).

Im Jahr 2007 hat die venezolanische Botschaft in Deutschland erklärt, dass sie wieder den Lehrstuhl Simón Bolívar unterstützen wollte. Michael Zeuske ist anscheinend dabei.

Ich übersetze:

"Die venezolanische Vertretung in Berlin arbeitet seit Juni, seit dem Besuch des Prof. Zeuske bei der Botschafterin Blancanieve Portocarrero, an diesem interessanten Projekt. Diesmal erwähnt der deutsche Dozent mit der Vertretungsleiterin, dass es in der Vergangenheit schon einen bolivarischen Lehrstuhl an der Universität Köln gab und dass ein grosses Interesse besteht, aufgrund der gegenwärtigen Entwicklungen in der lateinamerikanischen Republik einen solchen Lehrstuhl wieder zu eröffnen.

Man hat sich auch über die Struktur, den Inhalt und die methodologischen Strategien für diesen Lehrstuhl geeignigt und über die Möglichkeit, dies auch an anderen deutschen Universitäten zu tun."

Zeuske hat seit 2006 folgende Bücher veröffentlicht:

Kleine Geschichte Venezuelas

Von Bolívar zu Chávez

und nun

Simón Bolívar, Befreier Südamerikas

Seine Sicht zu Bolívar ist ganz anders als die des Historikers Rehrmanns...und das ist nicht verwunderlich.

Prof. Zeuske ist darüber hinaus Gutachter beim DAAD. Ich frage mich, ob der DAAD vor allem den letzten Kapitel des Von Bolívar zu Chávez oder viele der Aussagen des Professors zu Chávez gelesen hat.

Gerne würde ich wissen, wie dieser Lehrstuhl eigentlich aussieht und wer sagt, was man da sagen darf oder nicht...an einer deutschen Universität.

Rechtsstaat und Meinungsfreiheit in Venezuela des Pseudosozialismus

2011-11-13T09:23:00.001-08:00

Hier könnt Ihr (am Ende des Videos) sehen, wie einer der Präkandidaten für die alternativen Kräfte in Venezuela, María Corina Machado, von Chávez-Anhängern angegriffen wird. Man hört die Schüsse und sieht, wie die Leute Deckung suchen müssen. Chávez-Motoradfahrer beschiessen danach den Bus der Politikerin.

Das war im 23 de Enero-Viertel, das selbsternannte Revolutionären -eigentlich stinknormalle Verbrecher- "zona liberada" nennen. Seit 2010 hat der Militärcaudillo in der ärmeren Hälfte der Hauptstadt, im Westen, keine Mehrheit der Stimmen mehr. Nur Parroquias wie dieses Viertel sind immer noch vorwiegend pro-Chávez, darum die Reaktionen: wenn die Militärs 23 de Enero verlieren würden, wäre das der Hammer für die Pseudorevolution.

The Venezuela debate - die Venezuela-Debatte

2011-11-13T02:15:00.000-08:00

As I mentioned, this Monday there will be a debate among the pre-candidates of the Alternative Forces. If you want, you can try to suggest a question on education, security or employment to the twitter account @Debate14N....or you can write it here or send it to me at desarrollo.sostenible.venezuela at gmail, I will send them in Spanish. Venezuelans have really no experience on debate, so this is going to be fun.

Wie ich schon erwähnt habe, findet eine Debatte unter den Präkandidaten der Alternativen Kräfte an diesem Montag statt. Wenn Du willst, kannst Du Deine Fragen über Bildung, Sicherheit oder Beschäftigung an das Twitterkonto @Debate14N schicken, oder hier oder an mich unter desarrollo.sostenible.venezuela at gmail schreiben. Ich werde die Fragen auf Spanisch weiterschicken. Venezolaner haben wirklich keine Erfahrung, was offenene Debatten angeht. Das wird lustig sein.

Carlos the Jackal is no terrorist, Chávez honcho says

2011-11-11T07:52:00.000-08:00

Carlos Escarrá, Venezuela's current Solicitor General and well-known Chávez honcho, has just declared terrorist Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, a.k.a. Carlos the Jackal, is not a terrorist but a person who fought for his ideals and for people's rights, specially that of Palestinians. Well, I assure you: Palestine can do without such "fighters". In reality Ramírez got quite a lot of money for working as a professional assasin.

Escarrá says

This is Venezuela' Solicitor General, for Goodness sake!

this man "fought for his ideals"

Simón Bolívar, schon wieder...aber wie!

2011-11-11T06:25:00.000-08:00

Am Wochenende habe ich Norbert Rehrmanns Biographie über Simón Bolívar gelesen. Endlich konnte ich ein wirklich vernünftiges Buch auf Deutsch über das Leben, Werk und Einfluss des venezolanischen Caudillos lesen. Leider ist Prof. Rehrmann frühzeitig gestorben. Ich hätte gern ihm einen Danke-schön-Brief schreiben wollen.

Bolívar liess Manuel Piar umbringen, um sich als Armeeführer zu behaupten

Das Buch ist einfach sehr gut geschrieben, ohne Klisches, ohne Mannerismen. Rehrmann stellt sich die richtigen Fragen, er stellt nicht nur seine Position vor, sondern präsentiert die der anderen, die ganz anders denken. Seine Analyse ist scharf und weit entfernt von Dogmen. Er erklärt uns, wie Marx und Madariaga, aber auch alle bekannten Mitgestalter des Bolívarkults zu ihren jeweiligen Positionen zu dieser Figur gekommen sind.

Er beschreibt kurz und bündig, wie sich das Bolívarkult entwickelte und noch entwickelt...wie sich die Figur des venezolanischen Militärs in der Heimat, in Lateinamerika, aber auch in Deutschland seit Humboldts Zeiten über die Hitlerzeit bis jetzt entwickelt hat.

Ein Leser bei Amazon.de kritisierte Rehrmanns Position zur Hagiographie Bolívars, weil dieser angeblich die Rolle der USA "ausblendet" und nicht in Betracht zieht, dass die USA auch lateinamerikanische Caudillos als Gäste bei sich gehabt hat. Dieser Leser hat anscheinend Venezuelas Entwicklung gar nicht verstanden und rechtfertigt alles, was in Lateinamerika geschieht - auch das Chávez-Regime- mit der von uns wohlbekannten Einmischung der USA-Amerikaner in Lateinamerika. Er versteht nicht, dass das eben als Ausrede vieler "Linksnationalisten" (um die Worten des Chávez-Sympathisanten und DDR-Professors Zeuske zu benutzen) verwendet wird.

Wenn Ihr Venezuelas Geschichte besser kennenlernen wollt, müsst Ihr das Buch lesen.

We will start having debate in Venezuela...won't we?

2011-11-11T04:24:00.000-08:00

El Universal reports all opposition candidates have confirmed they will take part in the first debate for the primaries on 14 November. This is not just another debate...debates have been so few in Venezuela as snow storms in Mali.

Two questions arise:

- Will candidates really debate or will it be more like "I like you, man", "well, I like YOU more"?

- Will this debate put some pressure on the military autocrat to take part in debates once the candidate for the alternative forces is chosen? So far the caudillo has rejected any debate. He thrives on parallel monologues.

Stay tuned.

Will we see action?

Mind the fruit

2011-11-02T15:30:00.000-07:00

The Hura crepitans - in Spanish jabillo - is one of those trees I associate so much with my childhood. It grows in tropical America from Southern Mexico to Peru and it is very common in Venezuela.

Look at the thick trunk, covered with little spines:

You don't want to be close to it when one of its fruits falls down.

One now growing in Honolulu:

Die Einheit...von wegen

2011-11-01T15:47:00.000-07:00

Zur Zeit liefen sich die Parteien der "Einheit" eine regelrechte Schlammschlacht. Sie wollten im Februar Vorwahlen durchführen, um einen einzigen Kandidat gegen den Caudillo und einen einzigen Kandidat für die Stelle des Gouverneurs in jedem Bundesstaat auszuwählen, nun tauchen aber Konflikte.

Die alte Partei Acción Democrática unterstützt Pablo Pérez, Kandidat der Partei Un Tiempo Nuevo, einer Partei, die von Abtrünningen von AD gebildet wurde. Eigentlich ist sogar der Name Un Nuevo Tiempo (UTN) eine alte Bezeichnung für Acción Democrática, auch wenn sich fast niemand daran erinnert. AD und UNT - alter Populismus- wollen im Bundesstaat Zulia, wo Pérez jetziger Gouverneur ist, keine Vorwahlen für den Kandidat zum Gouverneurswahlen, während sie das doch für den Bundesstaat Miranda wollen, wo der Kandidat für die Präsidentschaftswahlen seitens Primero Justicia, Henrique Capriles, Gouverneur ist.

Und nun kritisiert Ocariz, Bürgermeister von Primero Justicia in Sucre, Caracas, diese Stellung...und die Sozialistische Einheitspartei Venezuelas - die Partei des Caudillos - freut sich.

Unten könnt Ihr die nennenswerten Vorkandidaten der "Einheit" sehen: Pablo Pérez, Leopoldo López, Henrique Capriles und María Corina Machado. Die drei ersten werden von Regionalregierungen unterstützt. Pérez ist zZ Gouverneur Zulias. Capriles ist Gouverneur Mirandas. López hat die Unterstützung des Lokalkaudillos Carabobos, Salas, vom Clan Salas-Feo. Die Salas-Feo würden lieber López als Kandidat haben, solange sie weiter den Bundesstaat Carabobo verwalten können. Machado steht ziemlich allein mit ihrem "Volkskapitalismus".

Wenn wir schon jetzt so eine Schlacht haben, wird Chávez nur verlieren, wenn er doch wirklich Krebs hat und dieser ihn umbringt.

The US/Israeli foreign policy

2011-10-31T15:57:00.000-07:00

Israel's conservatives must be proud of her

Nuland is spokesperson for the US Department of State. She said the US won't give money to Unesco as Unesco has accepted Palestine as full member. Her background is Jewish, which may be interpreted as a religious property, an ethnic property or anything in between. Is that completely unrelated? Let's imagine it is.

I wonder when the US is going to have spokespersons for the US Department of State who would be able to say the same thing and be of Muslim Arab background. Wouldn't she? Why?

Would the US had a Muslim Arab doing the work Ari Fleischer did? You bet.

The US is further blaming itself when it comes to the Palestine-Israel conflict. It only does what Israel wants. It sometimes pretends to do otherwise...for a couple of days.

It claims it will only accept Palestine as a nation when Israel and Palestine come to a settlement. Why did it accept Israel as a nation when the Arabs were against the UN 1947 decision? What's the difference between the terrorist organisation Hamas and the terrorist organisation Irgun, a group that was very much active until Israel got all the territories it got in 1948? Irgun commanders were people like Menachem Begin, afterwards considered heroes of Israel.

Shame on the US, shame on Germany, shame on Canada and a few other countries...just a few. Bravo for France, Brazil, Russia, China, India, South Africa...and 161 other countries.

The mock doctors in Venezuela under Chávez

2011-10-30T04:39:00.000-07:00

The president of the Academy of Medicine in Venezuela, Aoun Soulie, felt compelled to tell us for the nth time about a very worrying development: the education given to the so-called physicians of "Integral Medicine for Communities" is a farce.

This month 8300 people will get their title as "médicos integrales comunitarios" after having spent 6 years following an outdated study model based on Cuba's experience, which is based more on a myth than anything else. They spent all those years to become health experts and yet they have no training whatsoever in laboratory work, in tropical medicine (remember Cuba's not Venezuela), in radiology, biochemistry, parasitology, pharmacology, histology or anatomy (hard to believe but I got the same report from many good sources). They follow their courses by videoconference and have no training in the emergency rooms of public hospitals as was a must before Chávez came to power. Unlike physicians pre-Chávez, they have never been to operating theatres. Until now the law stated a surgeon had to first do one year of rural work and one in city hospitals. That's gone now: from the video-conferencing to the OR. When I arrived in Europe and had to visit a couple of physicians I immediately felt Venezuelan physicians were at least as good if not better than many German or British doctors. That will never be the case with these "Bolivarian" physicians produced by the Cuban-Venezuelan regime.

Only 225 of their 7215 teachers have actually a degree in medicine. That is weird, to say the least. Soulie also repeated what I have heard from two of the few real physicians who are working at the Bolivarian universities: teachers are told they cannot allow students to fail, all have to pass.

The health of the poor is more at risk than ever with these thousands and thousands of workers without proper training and no solid education dealing with emergencies of all kinds. Venezuela's so-called "revolution" is proving once more than it is nothing more than a pretense, a fairy tell for the gullible at home and abroad. Venezuela as a whole is also getting a new time bomb: how are we going to tell these mock doctors they were cheated by the Chávez-Cuban government for six full years and they would need to take some form of retraining to become real doctors once Chávez is gone?

Shame on Venezuelans: women getting killed

2011-10-28T15:14:00.000-07:00

Spain has been very openly discussing about violence against women for many years now. There have been many lots of discussions, marches and new laws. There have been films focused on this terrible topic and newspapers treat this subject on a permanent basis. There is a sense of urgency and there is reason for that: 51 women have been murdered in Spain by partners or relatives this year. Spain has 48 million inhabitants.

And what about Venezuela? Well: At least 501 women have been murdered by their partners or close relatives in Venezuela in the first nine months of this year. Venezuela has 16 million less people than Spain.

In Venezuela women are 15 times more likely than in Spain to get murdered by the people closest to them. If machismo and particularly violence against women is a serious problem in Spain, it is a national tragedy and a complete shame for Venezuela.

Even poorer countries in Spanish America, like the Dominican Republic, seem to be taking the issue more seriously than Venezuela. My country? It spends its time obsessed with Beauty Contests.

Venezuela has the highest murder rate of South America, by far. Still, this is part of a bigger problem: violence in general, widespread psychotic behaviour, repression. Late psychiatrist and writer Francisco Herrera Luque often discussed about certain psychotic traits in Venezuelans as part of their historical and genetic heritage: a nation particularly born from rape and myth. His hypothesis was highly controversial and yet I ask myself: isn't my country particularly sick? What's going on? Why do people keep such a terrible silence regarding this problem? Why don't politicians have the balls to speak up and speak out about this issue?

I am so sorry.

In the Dominican Republic they discuss about it

More weapons, banks, Russians, Venezuelans and FARC

2011-10-24T12:11:00.000-07:00

I wrote something about Viktor Bout, weapons, FARC and Venezuela in my Spanish blog.

"Invest in Venezuela's banks if you want to shoot from the hips"

Chávez und der Arzt

2011-10-22T09:22:00.000-07:00

Spiegel hat einen Artikel über den Arzt geschrieben, der über Chávez' Gesundheit so ausgiebig geplaudert hat. Leider gibt es kaum Informationen, die man nicht aus den venezolanischen Zeitungen hätte herausnehmen können.

Nun kommen die venezolanischen Ärzte, die Chávez kaum zu sehen bekommen (denn er lässt sich lieber von kubanischen Ärzten behandeln), und behaupten, die Gesundheit des Präsidenten sei "unverbesserlich".

Sie sagen, Navarrete sei nie Vertrauensarzt des Chávez und wäre kein Arzt des Chávez-Clans gewesen. Navarrete hätte einem der Ärzte zufolge nur 20 Minuten lang mit Chávez gesprochen, ohne Tests. Sie bestreiten auch, dass Chávez psychiatrische Behandlung gehabt hätte. Ein anderer Arzt des Teams, Rafael Vargas, sagte, dass Navarrete über die psychologische Lage des Chávez nicht hätte sprechen sollen, denn er ist dazu nicht geeignet. Was soll dies aber heissen? Dass Vargas erkennt, Chávez hätte psychologische Probleme, die aber nicht öffentlicht diskutiert werden sollten? Ein anderer Arzt sagte, Chávez wäre extrem vernünftig, "sogar überdurschnittlich".

Ist dies alles Seifenoper, um die Popularität des Caudillos zu erhöhen? Das werden wir bald erfahren.

Chávez, Gaddafis Kumpel

2011-10-20T15:14:00.000-07:00

Und wie erwartet sagte der venezolanische Caudillo nun, Gaddafi sei wie ein Martyrer gestorben. Chávez wisse nichts über Menschenrechtsverletzungen des Gaddafiregimes.

Der ehemalige Putschist und jetzige Präsident Venezuelas erklärte auch, er sei vom Krebs völlig geheilt. Ob er wirklich so krank war sei dahingestellt. Seit 1999 behauptete die Regierung zumindest 3 mal im Jahr, man wolle ihn töten. Seit Ende 2010 kursierten immer mehr Witze über die angeblichen Mordanschläge, von denen es keine Beweise gab und Chávez empörte sich darüber.

Na ja...

Vom Aussterben bedrohte Wildesel

Chávez's best friend in Africa is dead

2011-10-20T09:27:00.000-07:00

Gaddafi, one of Africa's many dictators, has been killed. Unlike Daniel, I think it would have been better to have him go to trial. Chávez was more likely to keep talking in defence of the African dictator thereby provoking even more rejection. Now Chávez will mention Gaddafi a couple of times, but that will be it, just like he did when he mourned FARC terrorist Reyes. Daniel Duquenal says trial in Den Haag hasn't brought peace to the countries of those dictators, probably referring to such cases as Serbia's and Liberia's. But then: war in both Serbia and Liberia was over way before those criminals were captured. Gaddafi was a mass murderer, but I think having him on trial and then behind bars would have been a better warning for others. Dictators behind bars are the exception. But that is all a guess. I am happy the war in Libya is finally getting to an end and I wish the country gets onto the path of stability and sustainable development.

It is quite revealing that at this hour, hours after Gaddafi's death, the Chávez state media hasn't said much about it. There is only one piece stating it is unclear whether Gaddafi has died. In Venezuelan newspapers you have already a lot of information on it all. Why is the Chávez state media so slow? Because they are waiting for the Venezuelan caudillo to say something.

Finally, I have to say this: I wish Western leaders were from now on a little bit more consistent...but I reckon that's too much to ask...oil and weapon deals trump human rights.

The Russians and Venezuelan oil

2011-10-12T15:25:00.000-07:00

Let's talk about oil now. A couple of days earlier I mentioned to you about how Russia's viceminister, ex-KGB man Igor Sechin, went to Venezuela to discuss a 4-billion dollar loan for weapons. He also talked about oil. Specifically, he discussed about the Carabobo-2 oil field. Rosneft' would be involved. That company is involved, together with Gazprom Neft', Lukoil, TNK-VR and Surgutneftegaz in the Junin-6 field.

Rosnet' will own 40% of the Carabobo-2 field and PdVSA 60%. Russians will be paying a bonus of 600 million dollars on top of 400 million dollars more for "initial investments". The total investment needed would go into many billions. A source told Kommersant the involvement in Carabobo-2 is more political than economic based.

Some people close to Rosneft' think it is logical that ExxonMobil, which usually works with Rosneft', would be the logical partner. Others doubt this will happen, specially after Exxon's assets in Cerro Negro were nationalized in Venezuela in 2006.

Some Russians think the whole gamble is very risky. Others think the loans for weapons and the investments will pay off with the return from oil.

How can they be so sure?

Der Hass des Sozialismus des 21. Jahrhunderts

2011-10-11T12:13:00.000-07:00

Hier könnt Ihr ein Video sehen, wo Julio Borges, der Vorsitzende der alternativen Partei Primero Justicia in Boconó, im Bundesstaat Trujillo, auftritt und von Chávez-Anhängern angegriffen wird. Die Polizisten tun praktisch nichts, denn sie sind der Militärdiktatur unterordnet.

Diese Region liegt sehr isoliert in den venezolanischen Anden. Die allermeisten dieser Leute haben keinen Internetanschluss, können gar keinen regierungskritischen Fernsehsender mehr empfangen und lesen kaum Zeitungen - und wenn, eher Boulevardzeitungen.

Ich freue mich, dass Borges da aufgetreten ist. Er und andere PJ-Politiker müssen von nun an das immer wieder tun. Es wird nicht einfach sein - Schutzmassnahmen gege Provokationen und Anschläge werden nötig sein.- Man muss es aber tun, wenn die demokratischen Parteien 2012 nicht 52%, sondern mehr als 65% der Stimmen bekommen wollen. Denn da gibt es nicht nur Chávez-Anhänger. Und je mehr die schweigende Mehrheit sieht, wie intolerant die Chávez-Bewegung ist, desto schneller wird sie ihre Stimme endlich mal erheben.

When criminal regimes support criminal regimes

2011-10-09T08:04:00.000-07:00

You can measure the health of democracy in a country is by looking at the governments that country's leadership prefers to support. Right now we read that diplomats from Venezuela, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Bolivia and Cuba are in Syria to support the bloody dictatorship in place there for several decades now. They do not seem to care about the thousands of civilians who have been murdered by the Assad regime.

The world should know about this: Chávez's regime and its puppets in the region are supporting Assad's atrocities.

The Russians won't let go

2011-10-08T03:01:00.000-07:00

Venezuela has spent at least 7 billion dollars in Russian weapons. A few days ago, Russia's government approved a $4 billion loan for the Venezuelan military caste to buy more defence material. A part of the loan will be paid in 2012 and a part in 2013.

Russia's Vice-Prime Minister, Igor Sechin, a very close ally of Putin and like Putin a member of the secret service oligarc club, went to Venezuela for the talks. Mr Sechin has been very involved in weapons' deals since his KGB times.

Newspaper Kommersant asked Russian officials why Russia was giving credit to a country with such huge oil reserves. The official said the following: "Chávez is our partner and hence the survival of his regime (sic) is in the interest of Russia. He will use the petrodollars in social programmes. That is why we at the VTS (War-Technical Cooperation Department) can support him"

Подробнее:http://www.kommersant.ru/doc/1789563?isSearch=True

What are the consequences?

We have reason to believe some Venezuelan military must have got more than a spasibo-note from the Russians for pushing with the Venezuelan caudillo to incur further debts on weapons. This is leading to more corruption and still less desire for a government change.

Will Venezuela become more of a danger for the outside world? We believe not. The military will become an even bigger threat to Venezuelan civilians.

As for the Russians: their secret services, which at least since Litvinenko we know are more interlinked with the mafia than ever thought, are going to see to it Russia doesn't lose such a customer as Venezuela under Chávez.

If you want to understand how deluded Venezuela's caudillo is, you just have to read his latest statement on oil reserves: "in the Orinoco Belt we have oil for 200 years. The rest of the world will run out of oil in the coming 100 years and we will keep exporting".

This man never asked himself what it means to have 200 years of oil...at what extraction rate? for how many consumers? what will happen with supply and demand? what will happen with alternative forces of energy in 20, 30 years - let's not go to a longer term -.

One of the most difficult tasks the Venezuelan alternative forces have ahead is to inform everyone about the pernitious cargo cult the country has developed. Oil could help us get some finance to invest in sustainable development if we make very important changes, but we are running out of time.

Meanwhile, the Venezuelan regime said the budget for 2012 should be calculated with an oil barrel at $50. The reason for this is to avoid sending much money to the local governments - and thus, to a lot of areas under opposition administration - and to divert the petrodollars - we are talking probably about at least $40 per barrel - to populist actions announced by Chávez himself.

You are from here

2011-10-07T11:35:00.000-07:00

110 readers took part in my poll to find out where you come from. As expected, the largest group were born in Venezuelan: about 25.5%. The second most numerous group are Germans. Then we have US born citizens with 17.3%. Britons account for 7%. About 8.2% are Europeans not coming from Britain, Benelux, Russia, Norway, Sweden or Spain. There were French, Russians, Chinese, from Northern Africa and from more areas. I find this cool: there were 4 visitors from sub-Saharan Africa. That's interesting as Venezuela has few current links with that part of the world (our greatest link were our slaves, among which I have a couple of ancestors).

All in all, you are a pretty varied group. Thanks all of you for coming!

An irreverent capuchin

2011-10-04T12:13:00.000-07:00

Venezuela has many types of capuchins. The White-Fronted capuchin or Cebus Albifrons is a blond one.

The species is becoming more and more under pressure by our usual destruction of other species' habitat. You can read more about the white-fronted capuchin here.

Not the type you see in Rome

Asinus asinum fricat - iterum

2011-10-03T12:00:00.000-07:00

The head of Belarus' Central Bank is Nadezhda Jermakova...Nadezhda means "hope" and that is what the Belarussian regime is desperately clinging to. Nadezhda Jermakova has just announced her country got 300 million euros in credits from Iran.

Belarus is basically bankrupt and it is being kept alive only through aid from other autocracies: from Venezuela's military regime through the years, from Russia and from Iran now. They all know: if Belarus' dictatorship goes, people in Russia, Iran and Venezuela will start to get some ideas. Venezuelans are getting those ideas already now. But what if Belarussians also start to protest more?

It is no coincidence that the Belorussians are visiting the Venezuelan caudillo these days...to keep alive the promise that yes, they will complete the 20000 houses they have promised over the years...and so much more.

Ist der venezolanische Caudillo todkrank? (denn die Toten reiten schnell)

2011-09-29T13:49:00.000-07:00

Meiner Meinung nach: es ist völlig egal. Ihr könnt Daniels Meinung hier lesen. Ich bin mit ihm völlig einverstanden. Seit 1999 hörten wir zumindest 3 mal im Jahr, dass es Mordanschläge gegen Chávez ("magnicidio") geben soll. Da diese Meldungen so langweilig wurden, benutzt man jetzt die echte oder imaginäre Krankheit des Caudillos, um Mitleid hervorzurufen.

Das ganze ist eine Seifenoper, wie so üblich in Venezuela.

Die Militärregierung hat nun die Reederei, die die Fähre zwischen Margarita und dem Festland betreibt, enteignet. Warum? Die Regierung behauptet, man hätte Kundenbeschwerde bekommen. Was ist wirklich geschehen? Wahrscheinlich wollen die Militärs eine bessere Kontrolle der Insel. Wieso nur?

Just some groovy music

2011-09-29T13:11:00.000-07:00

It's not from Venezuela, but from Senegal: Baobab. The Senegalese music was greatly influenced by Caribbean music (mainly Cuban, but not only), which in turn was the product of African music with an European touch.

I had the privilege to talk to a couple of these musicians. They are not just brilliant but also extremely friendly.

Caracas or Venezuela, 5 thousand or 17 thousand murders, whatever

2011-09-25T03:26:00.000-07:00

Updated

Here you see a BBC video on Caracas' crime. The BBC journalist Jonathan Dimbleby (which I wrongly took for Will Grant) goes around with the Caracas policemen in one of their night patrols.

At the beginning of the video Dimbleby says there has been over 17000 murders in Caracas last year. In reality the number should be for all of Venezuela. This blog has a lot of posts about crime. I know the level of violence and lawlessness in Venezuela just horrible. Still, I find it is a real pity a journalist from such an organisation as BBC juggles in such a careless way with numbers.

If you want to see a more careful report on crime in Venezuela, you can check out an old post by Rory Carroll, who did deliver a good picture and a more in-depth analysis. Rory used the low range (14000 plus) but he correctly refers to the country, to the city, to ratios and to the fact stats in Venezuela are usually a mess. Perhaps the journalists from the BBC could learn a bit from him.

Ps. I still find it annoying they don't send a BBC journalist who speaks some Spanish. After all, Spanish is the second or third most widely spoken language on Earth...and it is not as if Spanish were so hard to learn for someone whose mother tongue is also Indo-European.

Venezuela at the end of 2011

2011-09-24T03:32:00.000-07:00

The situation

Venezuela is not getting the money it should get from the the oil industry because PDVSA is in bad shape, corruption keeps growing and the president, who rules Venezuela as if it were his personal farm, is ill...or terminaly ill, or faking to be ill, depending on whom you ask.

We read that Akhmadinejad is not coming to Venezuela because Chávez is too ill (his chancellor, Maduro, said it is "waiting a few weeks for the completion of the healing programme".

The country is experiences protests everywhere. People protest and often don't know what their ultimate plan is. They want the State to help. Sometimes they want security, which is very much their right. Sometimes they want help in social housing, which is very much fair. Sometimes they want houses for free, which is not stupid and can only be possible in a place where most follow a cargo cult. Sometimes they want the government to improve their conditions that deteriorated after some of them asked the government to privatize their companies. Sometimes they are fed up of the way in which health services are collapsing. A lot are angry because blackouts and general electricity shortages are our daily bread. People close streets everywhere, burn tyres, make a lot of noise and the ones who suffer the most are other civilians. The mood is bad. The honchos in power are fine.

Daniel wrote about how the government wants now to limit profit in Venezuela to 10% while that same government is overpaying Nicaraguan and Iranian and Chinese exporters for political reasons. Inflation is almost 30%.The IMF predicts GDP growth of 2.7% and the Venezuelan government annouced that as a big achievement, but that is only because most people don't know how to interpret GDP growth. Venezuela has a population growth that is almost 2%, it has had over 15% more revenues due to higher oil prices since 2010, it is the slowest growing country in South America. You can't compare 2.7% of Venezuela with 1% for Germany.

The Forecast

What can you expect in the coming three months?

A lot depends on Chávez's real or perceived health status. Beyond that, we can expect the following:

1) the Chávez honchos are again increasing the personality cult around Chávez. This will reach even more mental levels in the coming months.

2) more money will flow from Fonden and other state resources to the Chávez campaign.

3) the regime will put more efforts on trying to use Leopoldo López to divide the alternative forces.

At the same time we will see an increase in the competition between the different pre-candidates for the opposition. If this is carried out in a fair manner, it could benefit democracy in Venezuela. If not, obviously, we will have more military government to come.

Expect Russia and China to meddle more and more in Venezuela's affairs. Venezuela means too easy money for them. The Chinese can become more flexible when it comes to accepting a regime change. The Russians know they will lose one of their best buyer of weapons. As the CEO of Rosobonexport, Anatolii Isaikin, declared, Venezuela was one of the five countries on which the Russian merchants of war count, together with huge China, India plus Algeria and Vietnam.

I take this picture from Miguel's post...here you see Venezuelan chancellor in a "mass" organized in Mannhattan to pray for the caudillo's health

Education for Venezuela, the Miranda model

2011-09-19T13:43:00.000-07:00

I have to say Henrique Capriles' efforts on education are starting to pay off. Whereas the military government in Venezuela is focusing on buying weapons, Capriles, who is a candidate for the 2012 presidential elections and current governor of Miranda, has been concentrating on improving schools in his region. It hasn't been an easy job, specially as the national government has been sabotaging all it can.

I have been personally involved in promoting the PISA programme in Venezuela. The Chávez government has ignored repeated calls to bring Venezuela to PISA as this would bring quite some transparency to Venezuela. It has been a frustrating thing to try to convince Chávez functionaries about allowing an open debate and research on education quality. The Miranda government, on the other hand, decided to meet the challenge and let pupils from Miranda take part in this international evaluation programme, just as most other American countries and other nations are doing.

Very soon we will get the results for Miranda's pupils. I imagine the initial results will be poor, but this is no surprise as Venezuelans' school levels were among the lowest in Latin America in 1998. The very low education levels in Venezuela were one of the main reasons, together with the oil price cycle, why the military came back to rule Venezuela in the first place. But now there is a new development. Very soon we will see how the central Venezuelan region of Miranda compares with the rest of the world...and we can build upon that and very soon all Venezuelan pupils will also join the PISA project.

The Mountain of Life

2011-09-18T04:39:00.000-07:00

In the Northwestern part of Amazonas State, not far from the Orinoco, you can visit the Autana mountain or Mountain of Life. The mountain is made up mostly of horizontal sandstone shields, mixed with karst, which is quite a strange thing, as karst shows up mostly in limestone formations.

The Autana rises only 1250 metres above sea level, but it looks pretty impressive as the jungle around is rather flat. This is the beginning of the amazing Guayana shield, which stretches for hundreds and hundreds of kilometres towards the East. To the West and North, going over the Orinoco, you have lands that belong to the Llanos.

The Piaroas are some of the main native American groups still living in this area. They speak a language that is completely unrelated to any other language but one.

Der Interamerikanische Gerichtshof für Menschenrechte und Venezuela

2011-09-16T11:31:00.000-07:00

Der Lateinamerikanische Gerichtshof für Menschenrechte hat sein Urteil bekannt gemacht: die Chávez-Regierung darf Leopoldo López seine politischen Rechte nicht mehr entziehen. Leopoldo López darf bei den 2012-Wahlen kandidieren - wenn die Chávez-Regierung internationale Menschenrechtsnormen respektiert. Schon davor hatte die Chávez-Regierung und die Richter des von ihr abhängigen Obergerichtshofs erklärt, dass sie darauf pfeiffen. Es stellt sich die Frage, ob sich Chavistas wirklich weiter isolieren wollen.

Venezuelas Gold und Chavez' Hände

2011-09-14T01:21:00.000-07:00

Der Spiegel berichtet auch über den Wunsch des venezolanischen Caudillos, das Gold des Landes so schnell wie möglich zurück nach Venezuela zu transportieren. Leider hat Spiegel sehr wenig Lust, über Venezuela zu recherchieren und beschränkt sich darauf, als Grund für die Aktion nur das zu zitieren, was der Präsident der Zentralbank, Nelson Merentes, sagt. Dem venezolanischen Beamten zufolge, will die Regierung Venezuela unabhängiger vom Erdöl machen - wirklich- und die Wirtschaft mit den Erlösen (des Goldverkaufs) breiter aufstellen.

Die Leute beim Spiegel haben anscheinend nicht darüber nachgedacht, dass Venezuela mittlerweile nicht 10%, 20%, nicht 50%, sondern über 600% mehr Geld bekommt hat als 1998 und zwar aufgrund der höheren Erdölpreise. Sind Teile dieser Zusatzeinnahmen nicht genug, um zu investieren? Nein, denn das Meiste wird einfach verschwendet wird und nur einige Milliarden werden in Sozialprogrammen, die wiederum leider keine Nachhaltigkeit aufweisen. Die Militärregierung (movimiento cívico militar, wie Chávez sie nennt) ist so korrupt, dass die erhöhten Erdöleinnahmen nicht mehr genug sind, um überhaupt die Wirtschaft wachsen zu lassen, geschweige denn zu diversifizieren.

Chávez hatte im Jahr 2009 bei Hard Talk über die niedrigen Erdölpreise des Landes als Grund für die Rezession erwähnt. In Wirklichkeit waren die "niedrigen" Preise nur ein lokales Minimum. Die Regierung bekam viel mehr Geld als in jedem der 13 Jahren vor Chávez Amtsantritt.

Miguel hat schon viel über den FONDEN, den Entwicklungsfonds Venezuelas gesprochen. Anscheinend haben wir wirklich mit einer Affaire zu tun, die an Mobutu erinnert. Wenn Du Englisch lesen kannst, musst Du Miguels Seiten besuchen.

Chávez braucht das Gold, um wieder gewählt zu werden. So einfach ist das. Die Petrodollars, findet er, könnten nicht genug sein. Gold kann man schnell verkaufen. Viel vom Erdöl ist schon an die Chinesen verpacht oder nur in einigen Jahren erreichbar. Chávez kann auch den Tipp von Gaddafi bekommen haben: mit Gold kannst Du den Kampf weiter führen, so oder so.

Hauptfeldwebel Mobutu, rolle model für Venezuela? Oder eher Gaddafi?

Venezuelas Opposition im September 2011

2011-09-13T14:25:00.000-07:00

Henrique Capriles hat bis jetzt die besten Chancen. Andrés Velázquez, Führer der Linkspartei Causa R und einer der wichtigsten Politiker im Bundesstaat Bolívar, hat seine Unterstützung für Capriles erklärt. Dies ist sehr aussagekräftig, denn Velázquez kann vieles in Bolívar erreichen. Er hat hinter sich auch viele Arbeiter.

In einigen Tagen werden wir erfahren, was für ein Urteil der Interamerikanische Gerichtshof für Menschenrechte über einen anderen der Präkandidaten, Leopoldo López, gefällt hat. Die Chávez-Regierung hat ihm seine politischen Rechte entzogen. Wenn der Gerichthof die Anklage López unterstützt, muss die gegenwärtige Regierung erkennen, dass López kandidieren darf. Das Problem ist, dass diese Regierung alles unternehmen wird, um immer an der Macht zu bleiben und López ist Konkurrenz. Schon jetzt hat die Richterin Luisa Estella Morales, regierungstreue Leiterin des Chávez-Obergerichtshofs, erklärt, dass die Regierung das Urteil nicht respektieren wird.

Es gibt noch andere Präkandidaten für die Opposition, die meisten haben aber gar keine Chance und man wundert sich, warum sie überhauot erscheinen.

Acción Democrática, eine der sozialdemokratischen Parteien Venezuelas, hat in Barinas, in den Llanos, eine Veranstaltung organisiert. Acción Democrática hat seit Jahrzehnten viel Respekt und Wähler verloren. Die Partei ist aber immer noch wichtig in diesen Regionen. Der Gouverneur in Barinas ist Chávez' Bruder. Er hat anscheinend die Chávez-Geheimpolizei, SEBIN, zur Veranstaltung abgeschicht, um alles beobachten und die Anwesenden zu fotographieren. Die alternativen Partei müssen mehr davon erwarten.

Barinas

Caracas's really getting hotter

2011-09-10T02:06:00.000-07:00

Alexander von Humboldt wrote in the early XIX century about Caracas' benign temperatures. Back then the saying "Caracas has an eternal spring" was already old and von Humboldt mentioned it as a common place back then. That common place was still used in the eighties of the XX century.

At the end of the XVI century wheat was grown in the Caracas Valley and exported to Cartagena de Indias and other Spanish harbours of the Caribbean where Spanish soldiers wanted to have their daily wheat-based bread and were still not used to our arepas or tamales. Wheat exports were so important that they became the economic motor of central Venezuela for a couple of decades and contributed to secure Caracas' role as main city in the Province of Venezuela.

Wheat exports collapsed in the XVII century due to competition from areas with more favourable climates. Cocoa and later coffee took over as Venezuelan main exports, but still, people kept growing wheat around Caracas for quite some time, something few Caraquenos would imagine possible now and not only because the whole valley is chock-a-block with cement and metal.

Caracas in 1839

A German by the name of Otto Bürger wrote in the early XX century a book about Venezuela, "Venezuela; ein Führer durch das Land und seine Wirtschaft". The book was published in 1922 and you can find a lot of fascinating data there.

I took from there data on mean temperature for Caracas according to the Cagigal Centre and compared those temperatures to the mean temperatures now. The average yearly temperature in the Cagigal weather centre in the early part of the XX century was 19.7 C° and it is 23.1C° now. That's quite a difference.

Caracas had about 92200 inhabitants in 1922. Venezuela's capital has over 3, 4 or 5 million people. The numbers vary widely depending on how each person defines Caracas borders.

Anyway: the destruction of forests and increased human activity in the Caracas Valley have undoubtedly been the main factors for the temperature rise. Of course, there is more to it, as the vast majority of scientists will recognise today.

The vast majority of aereal pictures you will see of Caracas online are from areas that were not urban 80 years ago.

Two beautiful whistle blowers

2011-09-04T02:50:00.000-07:00

After this post, reporter Steven Bodzin sent us this very beautiful picture of a whistling heron and a Great Blue heron (or something else). The birds were having lunch in the Venezuelan islands of Los Roques. I don't want to promote Los Roques too much because I think there should be less flights to that tiny archipelago and less rubbish pouring in from boats and permanent dwellers. I hope these birds and other species can see less of us...even if we want to see more of them. If you speak Cervantes' language, you can read in El Universal of last month about how Los Roques chokes in human rubbish.

Thanks, Steven.

Palestina, nationhood and US double standards

2011-09-04T01:12:00.000-07:00

Palestinians want to finally declare their independence and they should do so. Unfortunately, the US government will try to do anything it can to oppose it.

Washington has repeatedly declared Palestine could not do this unilateraly, even if what Palestine is trying to do now is what Israel did 63 years ago. The US Americans ask for "patience", even if Palestine's lands get cut into pieces every day, sliced with beton walls to protect Israeli settlements that have appeared in the last couple of decades in occupied territory. And while the Israelis - through a clever management of their U.S. ties - want to put off any independence by the Palestinians, they keep on carrying out ethnic cleansing in the Occupied Territories (1, 2, 3 and so much more).

What U.S. politicians and above all a large part of U.S. and British society don't grasp is that their inconditional, out-of-this-world support for a extremist Israeli position is ultimately detrimental not only to Palestinians but to U.S. and British interest. They are isolated themselves and creating yet more rejection from the rest of the world. Curiously, there is a much more open debate in Israel about how to behave towards the Palestinian question than in the U.S. People in the U.S. are afraid to be called terrorist supporter or the like if they utter a fraction of the things a lot of people in Israel can discuss about the Israeli policies.

The Israeli lobby will call anyone who wants an open debate on this "anti-Semite". No discussion, no, no, no. The Israeli lobby is not a single organisation but different interest groups, from religious or non-religious Zionists to liberals to staunch evangelical Christians who think their support will bring the Kingdom of Heaven closer to Earth. Still, it can lobby is extremely effective.

In 1948 the Jews got their independent state and not precisely by continuous negotiations with the Arabs. The Israelis had a terrorist organisation, Irgun, that murdered quite a lot of innocent people, including quite a lot of Britons. Irgun was absorbed by the Israeli military when the 1948 war broke out. Some of the terrorist leaders of Irgun became great leaders of Israel. One of them was Menachem Begin, after whom the main Israel airport and much more were called. The terrorist actions were not perpetrated by Irgun alone, though. There were quite a lot of actions the Israeli army carried out which were nothing but - here you have the word- war crimes. We don't talk about "colateral damage" but completely unnecessary, premediated and very lethal actions against civilians. Even people like Menachem Begin talked about them (more afterwards). Almost every other army in the world has carried out such atrocities, but somehow the Israeli lobby wants you to think the Israeli one is really more kosher than the rest. It is not. Not a single bit.

If you want to learn more details about that, don't let yourself be put down by people who warn you not to read sources they don't like, even if those sources were praised "by Bin Laden himself". Read, for example, The Israeli Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy or what Israeli historians such as Tom Segev have written.

"Don't read this, Bin Laden praised it!"

If you want to learn about that, don't just read a fiction book like Exodus (I did, as a child and Israel's official position definitely looked much more romantic there).Start to take part in an open debate.

I fear in the coming weeks some vested interests are going to try to organise quite nasty actions to prevent Palestinians from doing exactly what the Israelis did many many decades ago.

Palestinians have as much right to that land as Jews. It is in the interest of the U.S., of the U.K. and of the whole world to support them.

On a not-so-unrelated issue about kosher, read this.

Baby boom or what?

2011-08-30T00:26:00.000-07:00

Here you see the birth distribution according to year and month for voters in the states of Miranda, Carabobo and Delta Amacuro. The "October Hump" is incredibly similar for every state I have checked out.

Mind: Miranda and Carabobo are densely populated, central states. Average voter's age is 44. Delta Amacuro is one of the most thinly populated states (after Bolívar and Amazonas) and one with a high proportion of native Americans living in very poor conditions (the Waraos). Its average voter's age is 41.

How is it possible that there is a child boom in October only for the 1966-1976 period (one year less or more)? Even if you always have trends - one month more births than in others -, the distribution should be more widespread through months and years. Journalist Stephen Bodzin had this hypothesis that parents could be reporting in October in order to give an advantage to their children, who would then be go to a class where most are younger. I somehow don't buy this, it is just too general, the pattern seems the same in every municipality I have seen and I don't think millions of parents in Venezuela were thinking like this. Do you have any idea?Do you think Stephen may be right?

Delta Amacuro

Slick as a whistle

2011-08-29T10:56:00.000-07:00

The whistling heron is another bird you can find in Venezuelan and some other areas of South America. The one in the picture is from Uruguay, so it must whistle with a very funny accent.

Below you see its distribution in the wild:

When do Venezuelans shag? (updated)

2011-08-24T07:19:00.000-07:00

What you always wanted to know but were afraid to ask: in what month do Venezuelans shag the most?

I checked out several municipalities and the pattern wasis absolutely clear or, as Tibisay would say: the trend is irreversible. So, it turns out that Venezuelans shagged the most in January. Or at least Venezuelan women get pregnant more often in January than at any other time of the year. And the moment when less conceptions take place is May.

Updated: this is only valid if you take into account all voters

Birth distribution for Venezuelans in two parishes of Valencia, Carabobo

For more: for those parishes in Valencia and other municipalities

Now, this IS weird. If you try to see how the birth-month distribution per year was, you see a very strange anomaly for the voters in Carabobo born between 1966 and 1974:

Apparently, there were a lot of extra people being born in October in that period.

Die einzige Regierung, die immer noch Gaddafi unterstützt:

2011-08-24T06:33:00.000-07:00

Hier könnt Ihr direkt die Meinung der Chávez-Medien mal lesen.

Ein "Expert", der Argentinier Bueno Abad, sagt bei Telesur, die Medien im Westen und in den arabischen Ländern (lies Al-Jazeera) fokusieren sich zu sehr auf Gaddafis Familie und beachten nicht die Opfer, die durch Nato und Rebellen verursacht werden. Abad sagt nichts von den Menschenrechtsverletzungen der Gaddafi-Regierung. Ist er nicht schlimmer als FOX News oder CNN?

Ich hatte niemals, nicht mal zu Sowjetzeiten, eine so einseitige Einstellung gesehen wie die der Chávez-Anhänger.

Irgendwie wollen diese Leute sich gar nicht die Frage stellen, was die meisten Araber überhaupt darüber denken. Gaddafi ist einer der besten Freunde des Diktators Hugo Chávez. Alles ist ein Komplot des Westens.

Carabobo unplugged

2011-08-24T05:22:00.000-07:00

The electoral data in Venezuela can be quite interesting to mine...not just for election purposes. Here I show you some data from the central state of Carabobo. In the first image you see in black the average (rounded) age of voters in each municipio (for the Valencia municipality, in the 3 largest paroquias). In red you have for some municipios the percentage of people who voted for Chávez and the percentage for the democratic alliance.

Within the Valencia municipality (in yellow) you see quite a range of average age for voters. I put in brackets the percentage of votes the democratic alliance got. Some parishes are rather small, like Candelaria and Catedral, in the city centre. A lot of elderly live there. Now, what is clear and not surprising at all is that areas with big families tend to be poorer and tend to vote more for the military regime (just as they used to vote for Acción Democrática before).

Candelaria 47 (57.25%)
Catedral 48 (60.92%)
El Socorro 50 (71.78%)
Miguel Peña 41 (46.74%)Negro Primero 41 (20.38%)
Rafael Urdaneta 42 (54.48%)
San Blas 48 (67.42%)
San José 46 (88.78%)
Santa Rosa 44 (49.78%)

Age does not correlate completely with vote preference: Rafael Urdaneta's average voter - 42 years old, rather poor, tends to be more inclined to support the democratic forces, whereas the Puerto Cabello inhabitant, with a similar age (just a tiny bit poorer) does not.

Now, let's look at the birth year distribution for the northernmost and the southernmost urban parishes of Valencia:

Miguel Peña is lower class to lower middle class and San José is lower middle class upwards, whereby most people are just middle-middle class.

Obviously, the place where the democratic forces should focus their efforts now is in Valencia's South and in the peripheral municipalities.

We would need to get uodated hard data on income and education levels, but that is very hard to get in a country as Venezuela. Still, more to come...

(I did not show those voters who still exist and were born from 1870 onwards)

How Venezuelan expats vote

2011-08-23T12:23:00.000-07:00

We finally got the Consejo Nacional Electoral, the National Electoral Council, to publish the results of the 2010 elections at the Venezuelan embassies and consulates.

Those elections were bound to attract less expats to the voting centres. They could only vote for something called Parlatino, which is a Latin American "Parliament" most people haven't got a clue about. The Parlatino really has very little power, it is mostly a networking club for second-rank politicians. There are hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans abroad who could vote but for several reasons only 56031 are registered to vote. Of those, only 15434 went to vote on this occassion, less than 28%, much less than ever. This is not a trend, it is simply there was little interest to vote for the Parlatino.

Still, you can see the position of Venezuelans abroad: 74.79% of them voted for the alternative forces and against the Chávez regime.

If you check out the map below you will see a lot of red. Those are the countries where the Chávez government got more votes. How come? mostly, because the ones to vote were the embassy employees only. In places like Algeria or Poland there are hardly any Venezuelan. In places such as Belarus and Russia there are still some old commies and quite some people studying in several institutes (not least to become Chávez's "intelligence officials", as is the case for a group in Minsk).

In places such as Norway you have another picture: there are a couple of hundred Venezuelans at least and almost all of them are oppos, but most of them live in the very West of the country, far from Oslo. They are mostly workers in the oil sector and their families. Netherlands as a whole delivered more votes for Chavismo because Venezuela has quite some employees in the ABC islands. Most Venezuelans in the Netherlands proper (but for the embassy employees) vote for the alternative forces. As for Italy: I don't know. Perhaps somebody can tell me whether the Venezuelan embassy there is so large.

There will be more Venezuelans voting abroad next year. Still, our plan should be to move as many more of our compatriots to register. We should -should- have not just 56 thousand votes but over a hundred thousand. Over 80% of them are bound to vote for the alternative forces. To do that, we nee to campaign a lot. Venezuelans abroad can help to turn the tide, to take Venezuela towards democracy and sustainable development.

Ps. The government still hasn't published the votes abroad for the 2009 referendum. Chávez's people will probably argue even 56000 votes would make no difference, but that is not the point. They have to publish it, specially after Maduro said over 50% of Venezuelans registed to vote abroad actually signed a petition supporting the referendum, which is a lie.

While military man Hugo Chávez repeats ad nauseam he wants to go on living...

2011-08-22T09:52:00.000-07:00

While military strongman Hugo Chávez repeats ad nauseam he wants to go on living (1 2 3), humble Venezuelans get murdered every week because of the government's incompetence. The murder rate has more than tripled since the military caste came back to power, in 199.

Chávez has a 24-hour show about how he is now "living alive". He seems to have forgotten how he forced the military to repeat after him for years the slogan "Fatherland, Socialism or Death" and how he constantly says that if the alternative forces come to power blood will be shed. He parades some fans who have shaved their heads "in his support", but he doesn't do anything real about the horrible crime scene in Venezuela.

Yesterday some thugs killed a girl who was about to finish her studies in medicine in Valencia. Today another young woman was shot dead in Catia La Mar because some thugs wanted her BlackBerry. At least 23 people were murdered in Caracas this weekend - nothing unusual in Bolivarian Venezuela. Hundreds more have been murdered all around Venezuela. Over 16000 people will get murdered this year. Mexico, in spite of going through hell now with the gang wars, has a murder rate that is a fraction of what Venezuela under Chávez has - Venezuela has just a fraction of Mexico's population.

But Chávez messages appear every minute in the pervasive state media where Chávez says how much he wants to go on living. Well: we can sympathize with that, but Chávez definitely only sympathizes with himself.

For how long will useful idiots keep defending Chávez abroad?

Ps. Francisco Toro writes about how Chávez's media perceives the Libyan conflict. Don't miss it.

Eine Journalistin in Venezuela festgenommen, schon wieder

2011-08-21T15:34:00.000-07:00

Nancy Pérez Sierra, Ministerin für "Frauenrechte", gibt das Befehl zur Festnahme einer Journalisten wegen Kritik an weiblichen Bonzen

Die Leitering der Zeitschrift Sexto Poder, Dinorah Girón, wurde heute von der SEBIN - vom venezolanischen Sicherheitsdienst - festgenommen. Der Grund? Die Ministerin "für die Volksmacht für Frauen und Gleichberechtigung", Nancy Pérez Sierra, erklärte, die Zeitschrift verletze die Ehre und die Arbeit der Frauen im öffentlichen Dienst.

Die Ministerin fügte hinzu: "Wir werden diese Angriffe nicht akzeptieren. Die [Sicherheitsdienste] müssen diejenigen festnehmen, die das Vaterland beleidigein, die Frauen angreifen". Das ist genug in Venezuela, damit die Sicherheitsagenten einen Menschen festnehmen. Die Regierung tut praktisch nichts gegen Mörder, aber vieles gegen Journalisten.

Die Zeitschrift hätte u.a. Blanck Eekhout - Vizepräsidentin der Nationalversammlung-, Luisa Estella Morales -Präsidentin des Obergerichtshof, Luisa Ortega Días - Ombundsfrau "des Volkes"- und Tibisay Lucena -Präsidentin des Wahlrates-, kritisiert. Die Sünde: im Text steht, diese Frauen wären "die Mächtigen der Revolution". Ich weiss nicht, was die Zeitschrift noch überhaupt veröffentlicht hat, ich bezweifle aber, dass es sich um mehr handeln würde, als was Titanik jede Woche Titanic schreibt.

Hitler, Stalin, Lenin and Venezuela

2011-08-20T14:00:00.000-07:00

Going through the electoral register in Venezuela can be fascinating. One can discover a lot about Venezuela's society there.

I just looked up to see if there were voters with a couple of weird names. I just checked out data for one state, Carabobo. As expected, I found several Stalins and a lot of Lenins. I also found 3 men whose first name is Hitler. Almost all Stalins, Lenins and definitely Hitlers live in poor areas of Carabobo. Chances are those called Hitler have a darker skin colour than the average Venezuelan.

You can verify the IDs 13634680, 14171425 and 15591192, for instance.

Lenin's Red Terror

One thing is obvious: their parents didn't know much about history. They knew even less than the average Venezuelan, who doesn't know much either.

Below you can see the birth year distribution of voters called Lenin in Carabobo. Those are total numbers, so the proportion of Lenins in the whole voting population must have gone down more since the eighties. One can notice already from this: the name became popular among people influenced by extreme left tendencies in the second half of the sixties and in the seventies. Curiously, the number of Lenins dropped the year when Carlos Andrés Pérez too office as president of Venezuela for the first time, in 1974. Coincidence? I don't know.

If we are ever going to get Venezuela out of underdevelopment, we need to do something urgent about this.

Try to see how hard it is to be opposition under the "Bolivarian" regime

2011-08-19T04:40:00.000-07:00

This used to be a beautiful city

Cocchiola is a deputy from Valencia, Venezuela's third largest city. Yesterday he went to the Municipal Council to request an inquiry on the current mayor, PSUV honcho Edgardo Parra. Cocchiola accuses Parra of corruption. Parra has been the mayor since 2008 and most people, even former Chávez supporters, are very disappointed about his work. The Chávez honcho has spent a lot of money in trips; the first one he took with a huge delegation was to China, but he kept traveling around the world. Parra has put friends and relatives to work as consultants for him. The construction of the city's subway is stalled, though, and crime is worse than ever. Streets are filthy, there hasn't been much wok on social programmes.

A group of Chávez employees shouted insults againt Cocchiola. After the opposition politician managed to deliver the petition, the situation got out of hand. Chavistas prevented journalists from taking pictures, they pushed them and threw mud at them. The municipality's police, under Parra's control, stood motionless.

After Cocchiola left the building, the Chávez employees ran after him and threw him a basket full of rubbish, they threw him stones and water.

Parra said there was no aggression. When journalists asked Parra about the mud, the stones and the water, the Bolivarian man said: "that's something else. Here there was no physical aggression".

Apparently, for the military and the extreme left honchos, physical aggression only happens if you use a gun or you hit somebody with your fists.

This is our daily bread outside Caracas. Few foreign journalists are interested in covering this kind of events. No EU or OAS observer will have time to see this kind of action.

The Vikings discover more oil under the sea

2011-08-18T08:19:00.000-07:00

You can read about that here (in German). Norwegian oil reserves could go up a sixth of its current volume.

Will this have some effect on oil prices in the mid term?

What do you think Chávez told Gaddafi?

2011-08-17T15:08:00.000-07:00

I read in Lenta some people think- again - that Gaddafi is getting ready to leave Libya. The Libyan dictator would apparently be ready to transfer power to his minister of Justice - if there is a cease fire and "NATO forces leave Libya". Fat chance. Anyway: two Airbuses came from South Africa. Some of Gaddafis relatives and government honchos may consider going to Venezuela.

There is a Venezuelan representative (or shall I say a Chávez representative) talking to Gaddafi officials in the Tunesian island of Djerba.

Is this true or yet another rumour? Or do Gaddafi's relatives reckon Venezuela may still be a good place for shopping? Stay tuned.

Should I go? How long could I stay there?

Science in a banana republic

2011-08-17T10:34:00.000-07:00

Humberto Fernández M orán must be rolling in his grave

Researchers from the Universidad Simón Bolívar, the Universidad Central de Venezuela, IVIC and Unimet are asking the Supreme Court to declare the new Law of Science, Technology and Research inconstitutional.

This law is the kind of concoction only a military regime in a banana republic can think of. Venezuela is supposed to be a pluralistic state and yet this law is slanted towards one single ideology. The law's objective is suppossed to be "the creation of the Socialism of the 21rst Century in accordance with the National Plan for Economic and Social Development of 2007-2013". That plan, by the way, was based on the work by a Chilean communist, Marta Harnecker. The term 21 Century Socialism is a fancy name proposed by Heinz Dieterich, a rather obscure figure mostly known within the Latin American hard-core left circles who a few days ago wrote an article explaining how he fell out of love with Chavismo.

This piece of legislation would mean only those projects that have the support of the government in office - a government that wants to stay forever - will get financial resources from the State.

The new law is also against research by the private sector: all the money for research should go to the government, which will manage it as it sees fit. This means that basically no private company can legally be working on research and development unless Chavismo approves it.

It's quite amazing no one seems to tell the military pseudo-socialist regime that the Chinese are doing exactly the contrary to what Chavismo is trying to do.

This is the kind of thing 95% of Venezuelans won't grasp but it is also the kind of things that will affect 100% of Venezuelans for many decades to come unless we react now.

Sozialismus des 21. Jahrhunderts: ade

2011-08-16T04:32:00.000-07:00


ZA = K (Zeit Arbeit = Kohle) Ein neues Gesetz der Sozialwissenschaften

Heinz Dieterich hat nun einen Artikel über seinen Bruch mit Hugo Chávez geschrieben. Viele der Chávez-Anhänger fühlen sich schon wieder verraten, wenn man die Reaktionen der Leser in KaosEnLaRed.net sieht. Und kaum einer unter ihnen denkt darüber nach, wieso das immer wieder bei ihnen passiert: warum gibt es immer wieder diese Aussteiger?

Dieterich behauptet, wie schon viele Kommunisten vor ihm, dass seine Ideen etwas mit Wissenschaft zu tun haben. Man würde gern wissen, was Dieterich unter "Wissenschaft" versteht, ob in der Soziologie oder sonst. Wie auch immer: Dieterich denkt, seine Idee, Arbeitszeit als Mass aller Dinge für Belohnung in der Wirtschaft zu benutzen, wäre etwas Revolutionäres, etwas Neues. Dieterich weiss anscheinend nicht, was Produktivität ist, was Motivation bedeutet. Er hat wenig mit Kreativität gehabt. Zeit messen, belohnen: das ist für ihn die Lösung unserer Probleme, das Ende vom Kapitalismus, Menschen werden sich daran halten. Es ist für Dieterich egal, wenn jemand vor dem Schreibtisch 8 Stunden hinvegetiert und wenn jemand 8 Stunden lang eine Reihe Erfindungen schafft.

Vielleicht hat der "Wissenschaftler Dieterich eine Idee, wie man "echte" Arbeitszeit messen kann? Mit einer Kamera vielleicht? Einfach genial!

Und Dieterich, der von Informatik nichts weiss, sagt uns auch: nun kann man wirklich die partizipatorische Demokratie einführen, denn nun können wir alle immer bei jeder Angelegenheit unsere Stimme bei E-Wahlen geben. Ich nehme an, der Dieterich wird das nur behaupten, solange die Programmierer auf seiner Seite stehen.

Tja...das war der Denker des 21. Sozialismus. Wenn Journalisten jemanden suchten, der endlich mal eine theoretische Basis für den "Chavismus" zur Verfügung stellen konnte, hatten sie den Dieterich.

Und nun haben sie nichts.

Warum?

Dieterich sagt, er hätte "wissenschaftliche und politische Ethik" und dass er darum bei einem Kongress sagte, Venezuela hätte noch keinen Sozialismus "im historischen Sinne", dass man in Venezuela einfach dabei war, die Bedingungen für eine gerechtere Gesellschaft zu bauen. Und das war nicht gut genug für viele und das war definitiv nicht gut für Chávez. Der Caudillo war sauer. Der Caudillo sagte ein Treffen mit Dieterich ab. Dieterich hatte seinen Stolz. Chávez rief ihn dann nicht an. Liebe war weg.

Tja...schade, dass Dr Dieterich den Nobelpreis für wissenschatliche und politische Ethik nicht bekommen hat.

Dieterich sagt dazu, Chávez benutzt dieselbe Strategie, die Deutschland nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg benutzt hat, um wieder voranzukommen: Chávez benutzt die soziale Marktwirschaft. Ich glaube, die CDU/CSUler werden wirklich baff sein, wenn sie hören, dass Chávez auf den Spuren von Alfred Müller-Armack und Ludwig Eckhard ist. Das hatten sie bestimmt nicht gewusst. Das hätte ich auch nicht geahnt. Dieterich schon. Und Dieterich ist - so steht es in Wikipedia - ein Dozent an einer mexikanischen Universität.

Wenn der alte Eckart wüsste

Dieterich erklärt, Chavez habe ihn wegen der Bürokratie nicht mehr kontaktiert...so wie das bei der Sowjetunion halt war. Man weiss schon: die Kommunisten sagen immer wieder, die sozialistischen Regierungen - die angeblich keine sozialistischen Regierungen waren, sondern "kapitalistische Staatsdiktaturen" - wären an der Bürokratie gescheitert. Wie auch immer: Chávez hat ihn nicht angerufen. Also Schluss.

Warum bekommt man den Eindruck, es handelt sich um eine Liebesgeschichte der Bravo-Zeitschrift und nicht um den Aufsatz eines politischen Denkers?

Kein Wort über die Macht der Militärs, über Korruption, über die Drohungen des Chavismus, Waffengewalt zu benutzen, wenn die Wahlen nicht günstig sind. Kein Wort über die ideologischen Widersprüche und die absolute Abwesenheit einer nachhaltigen Entwicklung. Also bleiben uns nur Dieterichs Zeilen über Verschmähter Liebe Pein.

For how long can Venezuela be a parasite nation?

2011-08-14T08:33:00.000-07:00


$ per barrel, projection with 10% price increase:	This is unlikely to remain for so long

Venezuela has experienced the longest oil boom in its history. The Chávez regime has been able to cling to power thanks to that. And yet the military regime has become so inefficient, so corrupt, that it does not only need high oil prices, but permanently higher oil prices. How sustainable is that?

Let's imagine oil prices increase now on average 10% per year. As I have written before, that would be enough to keep Venezuela from getting back into recession. It is very doubtful that the trend can keep itself for many years: a threshold will be reached that would move us towards a definite fuel shift. This fuel shift won't be complete in a year or two but once it gets started, it will set itself forth and Venezuela will start to get less dollars for each barrel.

Unfortunately, no one in Venezuela is talking about this. This is bad. Someone within the alternative forces has to have the courage to tell the population Venezuela is not really a badly managed rich country.

The irrational US support to Israel and ethnic cleansing

2011-08-14T06:53:00.000-07:00

Do yourself a favour and get yourself the book by Mearsheimer and Walt, the Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy.

Don't just read what this or that group says about the book. Get the book yourself, read it and think about it. Reality is a little bit different from what we read in that Exodus novel.

An interview with Mearsheimer in 2010

Unlike what Mearsheimer and others say, I don't think Arabs will outnumber Jews in either a one or a two-state solution. Birth rates have been leveling off.

The Israeli government approved a couple of days ago more settlements in land stolen from the Palestineans. Excuse? They claim they are more linked to the Jews of 2000 years ago than the Palestinians who have lived there.

And here you have Amin Hass, a journalist from Ha'aretz. Listen from minute 7.

Deutschland, die Mauer und Chavismus

2011-08-13T01:33:00.000-07:00

Berlin, Deutschland

An diesen Tagen gedenken die Deutschen den Bau der Berliner Mauer. Die Mauer war die Lösung einer totalitären Regierung gegen Transparenz, Vergleich, Debatte, echte Kommunikation. Die Mauer hat ganze Familien getrennt und viel Hass geschürt. Hunderte von Menschen wurden umgebracht, als sie aus der DDR fliehen wollten.

Einer der wenigen Menschen, die sich nie von der DDR-Diktatur und vom Bau der Mauer distanziert hat ist Sahra Wagenknecht, die nicht zufällig einer der wenigen Politiker Westeuropas ist, die Chávez unterstützen.

Venezuelas Mauer

Die meisten Menschen in Venezuela haben keinen Internetzugang. Es ist gar nicht einfach für sie, andere Länder zu besuchen. Die meisten sprechen keine andere Sprache ausser Spanisch. Chávez braucht keine Betonmauer, um sie zu isolieren. Seine Kontrolle der Medien sorgt dafür: die regierungskritische Medien sind vorwiegend Zeitungen, die nur eine kleine Minderheit las und liest in einem Land, wo kaum jemand Zeitungen liest. Es gibt noch dazu Globovision, ein schlechter Fernsehsender, der weniger als 30% der Bevölkerung erreichen kann.

Die Venezolaner müssen jetzt neue Brücken bauen und Tunnel durchbohren, um die Informationsmauer zu durchbrechen, die die Regierung und einfach die technologische und bildungspolitische Rückständigkeit gebaut haben. Wir müssen zu den Leuten jenseits dieser Mauer gehen, Debatten, Austausch von Ideen fördern. Es wird Zeit in Anspruch nehmen, diese Mauer wirklich abzubauen und seine zerstörerische Kraft verschwinden zu lassen. Wir müssen es aber ab sofort tun.

This snake won't kill you

2011-08-12T12:08:00.000-07:00

You have to watch out for mapanares and cuaimas and a few others but most of the other snakes in Venezuela are non venomous.

The Liophis reginae is one of those that are not lethal. It eats frogs, small fish, lizards.

Die alternativen Parteien haben noch einen

2011-08-10T12:51:00.000-07:00

Pablo Pérez ist der Kandidat für die sozialdemokratische Partei Un Nuevo Tiempo.

Diese Partei ist im westlichen Bundesstaat Zulia sehr stark. Sie ist aber anderswo kaum vertreten. Acción Democrática, eine andere sozialdemokratische Partei, wird anscheinend diesen Kandidat für die Vorwahlen vom Februar 2012 unterstützen.

Wir haben nun folgende Präkandidaten für die Mesa de la Unidad:

Henrique Capriles

Pablo Pérez

María Corina Machado

César Pérez Vivas

Leopoldo López

Leopoldo López wird wahrscheinlich nicht kandidieren dürfen, weil die Cháve-Richter das halt nicht wollen. Acción Democrática könnte Pablo Pérez viel helfen, denn sie ist zwar schwach aber überall auf dem Land vertreten. Sie ist stark auf der Insel Margarita. Viele denken aber, dass Capriles eine bessere Akzeptanz überall in Venezuela - ausser in Zulia - haben kann. Zulia ist ein bisschen wie Bayern für Venezuela.

Flowers that fight malaria

2011-08-10T00:44:00.000-07:00

The Chinchona pubescens originated in Northern South America but it has spread around the world, now becoming a very invasive species in other places. Native Americans and later the rest of the world have used this plant to produce quinine for the treatment of malaria, among other diseases.